Ok, this is a really strange issue with fontconfig, which I came across a number of times. It is not always reproducible, but whenever it happens the solution is always the same - reinstall fontconfig. All the following *seems* to happen if you are not running UTF locale. The problem is the following, after emergeing certain applications, such as mazilla (AFAIK with gtk2 support), or just gnome (on a newly installed system or the one already running some non-gtk2 apps). All the russian characters a replced with squares, containing utf codes in them. It does not matter which font you chhose the situation is always the same. The sollution, which always seems to work, is to reemrge fontconfig, though I do not understand who it actually works. Reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. Set locale to ru_RU.KOI8-R 2. Emerge mozilla with GTK2 support. 3. Open a page with russian text (e.g.: www.linux.org.ru) Actual Results: All russian text is replaced with rectangle with unicode codes in them. Expected Results: See russian text.
do you have any fonts that provide russion cyrillic characters?
Yes I do have (e.g.: Verdana font). A small addition to the bug: In the same time all gtk1 apps work with no problems.
did you have an older fontconfig before hand? as far as i know, verdana should work fine with russian fonts on mozilla or any other gtk app. (i know because evolution opens all my russian spam properly ;) it is the first time i've heard of this, but i'm not too familiar with fontconfig, maybe foser might know a little more about it.
Nope, I did not have an older fontconfig before, as I had exactly the same trouble with a plain new installation. It seems to be that fontconfig does not see any oher glyphs except english one. Reemerge it and it sees them ;)
One more testing case showed that fc-cache -v does not solve the issue. Againg reemerging was the remedy.
hmm that shouldve been 'fc-cache -f', did i say -v ? -vf wouldve been ok
If I open xterm and switch GTK font antialiasing off (export GDK_USE_XFT=1), then start application from this xterm window (for example Mozilla) I don't have such a problem (but I don't have antialiased font support of course). Of course it disapears too after reemerging fontconfig.
NEEDINFO really still need you to try with '-f'
I recently made a fresh gentoo installation on a new box with gtk2 + gnome. fc-cache -f did not help at all. It indeed regenerated the cache, but everything stayed as it was. Again remerging solved the isue.
well either there's something happening to your binaries or it's a complete mystery to me. The only thing the ebuild does is rebuild and run 'fc-cache -f' (as root). It is possible that the fontconfig caches are locale dependant, but then this should be solved if you redo this with under the right locale.
>It is possible that the fontconfig caches are locale dependant, but then >this should be solved if you redo this with under the right locale. This was the case, as I specify my LC_ALL settings in the 00basic (or /etc/profile) file, which means that root has exactly the same locale.
