Bug 146370 – missing fontconfig documentation

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

[Description Peter `MathFox' Roozemaal 2006-09-05 03:53:36 UTC]

On a headless application server programs like gvim and glade abort with the following message:

No fonts found; this probably means that the fontconfig
library is not correctly configured. You may need to
edit the fonts.conf configuration file. More information
about fontconfig can be found in the fontconfig(3) manual
page and on http://fontconfig.org

man fontconfig draws "No manual entry for fontconfig"

I'ld like to get instructions on how to get fontconfig use the font metrics of my (remote) X server; some X(gtk) programs are happy with the remote fonts.

# emerge --info
Portage 2.1-r2 (default-linux/amd64/2006.1, gcc-4.1.1, glibc-2.4-r3, 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+
Gentoo Base System version 1.12.4
app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present]
dev-lang/python:     2.4.3-r1
dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5
dev-util/ccache:     [Not Present]
dev-util/confcache:  [Not Present]
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.17
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.59-r7
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2
sys-devel/binutils:  2.16.1-r3
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r3
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.22
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.11-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-Os -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/terminfo"
CXXFLAGS="-Os -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/os/linux/gentoo ftp://mirror.scarlet-internet.nl/pub/gentoo http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="amd64 berkdb bitmap-fonts cli crypt cups dlloader dri fortran gdbm gnome gpm gtk ipv6 isdnlog libg++ mmap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly pam pcre perl postgres ppds pppd python readline reflection session spl ssl tcpd tetex truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode xorg zlib elibc_glibc input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse input_devices_evdev kernel_linux userland_GNU video_cards_apm video_cards_ark video_cards_ati video_cards_chips video_cards_cirrus video_cards_cyrix video_cards_dummy video_cards_fbdev video_cards_glint video_cards_i128 video_cards_i810 video_cards_mga video_cards_neomagic video_cards_nv video_cards_rendition video_cards_s3 video_cards_s3virge video_cards_savage video_cards_siliconmotion video_cards_sis video_cards_sisusb video_cards_tdfx video_cards_tga video_cards_trident video_cards_tseng video_cards_v4l video_cards_vesa video_cards_vga video_cards_via video_cards_vmware video_cards_voodoo"
Unset:  CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY

[Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-09-05 04:02:39 UTC]

Erm, man fonts-conf and all the other manpages and docs in /usr/share/doc/fontconfig-<version> that you get w/ USE="doc" are not enough? In that case, you'll have to submit your own improved docs upstream. 

(And, there's no fontconfig(3) in the fontconfig tarball, the message you get is wrong (upstream issue, send it to authors of the app that spits out this message).