Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU!mouse
From: mouse@LARRY.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Using dxterm from a Sun
Message-ID: <8911120409.AA22235@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 12 Nov 89 04:09:08 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 35

>> When I try to open a dxterm or some other DEC-specific applications
>> on my Sun, the call fails with some strange message about loading
>> fonts.  It even dumps core, depending on the particular application.

> We too had this problem; the problem is that certain dec specific
> fonts are non-existant on the standard mit distribution.
> [...] (e.g. 'so-and-so font missing, using fixed...') -- however, the
> applications crash after that message, suggesting that they continue
> to try to use the non-existant fonts.

Not that it's directly related to DEC software, but this may be related
to something I discovered a while ago.

Using the server default font isn't quite as easy as it seems; I had
programs die similarly until I finally tracked it down.

The essence of the problem is this: you can use XQueryFont with a GC to
find information about the font of that GC; using this with the default
GC of a screen gives you info about the server default font for that
screen.  However, the fid element of the resulting XFontStruct is the
ID of the GC, not of the font, and in particular it can't be used to
set the font in XCreateGC or XChangeGC.  (You can get the server
default by creating a GC without specifying a font, or copying the font
from the default GC.)

This is unpleasant particularly because you generally don't notice
anything wrong on your development system; it's only when the
application gets out into the world and runs into servers that don't
have the font in question that the code gets used and its brokenness
becomes apparent.

					der Mouse

			old: mcgill-vision!mouse
			new: mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu