Charset problem in Terminal

[James Tappin]

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 19:07:58 +0100
Benedikt Meurer <benedikt.meurer at unix-ag.uni-siegen.de> wrote:

> James Tappin wrote:
> > On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 13:19:05 +0100
> > Benedikt Meurer <benedikt.meurer at unix-ag.uni-siegen.de> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>James Tappin wrote:
> >>
> >>>When I define "Terminal" as the TERMCMD in xffm and then use it to
> >>>launch a terminal in a directory, I get a wierd charset (see attached
> >>>screenshot). If I use other terminals e.g. gnome-terminal or a plain
> >>>xterm there is no problem and Terminal works correctly when launched
> >>>from the panel or the command line.
> >>
> >>So, it only happens if you run Terminal from xffm?
> >>
> > 
> > 
> > I've now managed a more thorough investigation, and it appears that
> > there are 3 fonts which suffer from this problem "Monospace", "Sans"
> > and "Serif" (there may be some of the more obscure ones as well but of
> > the mainstream fonts that I've checked, those are the affected ones.
> > 
> > Of the various terminal emulators where abitrary fonts can be easily
> > selected: Terminal, xfce4-terminal and gnome-terminal are affected,
> > konsole is not.
> 
> Hm, looks like a fontconfig problem then. All three mentioned font names
> are aliases for other fonts. Please check your config.

I'm not really familiar with fontconfig but as far as I can tell from
/etc/fonts/fonts.conf Monospace should translate to Bitstream Vera San
Mono (which does work correctly when used explicitly). Changing font in a
Terminal started from the command line or the panel confirms that this is
the font being used. [I haven't changed the default fonts.conf from the
Debian package, nor have I added a site file]. Is there anything in
particular I should look for there?

I believe that the font paths in the XF86Config file are also the defaults
provided by Debian (fontserver on port 7100 and a list of pretty
standard-looking directories).

I do find it puzzling that the problem only affects terminals launched
from xffm, but not those launched from the panel, the command line or Rox.
Unfortunately I've not been able to locate the code in xffm that actually
does the launch to try and see if there is some subtle difference from
other ways of launching the terminal.

James

-- 
James Tappin,             O__      "I forget the punishment for using
james at tappin.me.uk       --  \/`    Microsoft --- Something lingering
http://www.tappin.me.uk/            with data loss in it I fancy"