Re: gdk_fontset_load and font descriptor

[Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru>]

On 11 Jan 2002, Christian Marillat wrote:

> 
> >> "VH" == Vlad Harchev <hvv hippo ru> writes:
> 
> 
> [...]
> 
> >  First, "adobe-helvetica" contains only latin1 glyphs, so use "*-helvetica"
> > instead of "adobe-helvetica" (because helvetica from other vendors can
> > contain the user locale's glyphs, while adobe's - definitely won't).
> >  Second, don't ever append ",*-r-*" to font descriptor. This is very bad
> > practice that leads to very funny visual appearance.
> >  Third, make it translatable. 
> >  So we got the 1st variant. :)
> 
> Then I did a quick grep in gnome-core and some font aren't translated in
> gnome-about/gnome-about.c 
> 
> But I still don't understand why gdk_fontset_load is unable to return a
> font name instead of NULL.

 It can perfectly happen if user's locale is some exotic - e.g. with euro
symbol - as described by Colin Watson in
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?archive=no\&bug=110885
Try to run the same app under "C" locale.

 Also user may have his font path screwed up (no rx attribute on
/usr/X11R6/lib/fonts or whatever)..
 
 And of course translators who translate font names can be guilty for these
problems too. Try to run same app under LC_MESSAGES=C to detect such errors 
(unfortunately gnome apps just ignore LC_MESSAGES completely, so you can use
LANG=C to detect such errors.

 Also it would be wornderfull if gdk_fontset_load wrote to the stderr the name
of the font it failed to load - then it would be trivial to find out whether
translator is guilty or app loading exotic (and non-existant) font name.
 Also it it would be nice if gdk_fontset_load felt back to "*-r-*" font if it
can't load the user-supplied fontset..

> See   
> 
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=116004&msg=17&repeatmerged=yes
> 
> This bug is very annoying for end user who don't know what's wrong, and
> especially with gmc http://bugs.debian.org/108375 or with anjusta
> http://bugs.debian.org/110885 or with galeon
> http://bugs.debian.org/116004 whit i nice segfault.
> 
> Christian

 Best regards,
  -Vlad