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#1 2009-03-12 21:04:01

trebuchet
Member
From: London, UK
Registered: 2009-03-08
Posts: 6

How to install gecko-mediaplayer without corrupting kde fonts

Hi,

After installing gecko-mediaplayer with pacman, the Sans Serif and Monospace fonts I use in KDE went kind of fuzzy. Removing gecko and its dependencies restored the fonts to their proper state. I'm guessing its something to do with the fact that gecko requires ttf-dejavu as a dependency.  Does anyone know why this might be happening? It's not a huge issue (I'm sure I can live without gecko) I'm just curious to understand why.

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#2 2009-03-20 22:42:31

FrozenFox
Member
From: College Station, TX
Registered: 2008-03-23
Posts: 422
Website

Re: How to install gecko-mediaplayer without corrupting kde fonts

(This is a slightly old post, but not responded to -- I have been looking for details on this for days and finally figured it out for the most part on my own. I figured I'd share my results and respond at the same time)

You're right, it does have something to do with ttf-dejavu. I could repeatedly install that dependency, close konsole, reopen it -- and the fonts were corrupted. Uninstall it, close konsole, open it -- fonts are fine again. While looking around and not finding anything, I finally came across some faq that said to install all of this crap, which ONLY MADE THINGS WORSE:

font-bh-ttf ttf-cheapskate ttf-isabella ttf-junicode ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu ttf-mph-2b-damase artwiz-fonts terminus-font font-bitstream-speedo gsfonts ttf-bitstream-vera xf86bigfontproto xorg-fonts-100dpi xorg-fonts-75dpi xorg-fonts-alias xorg-fonts-encodings xorg-fonts-misc xorg-fonts-type1 ftgl font-mathematica ttf-freefont

It made things 'worse' because even after uninstalling those things (unlike what happened with ttf-dejavu), which had my whole desktop with corrupted fonts, the problem wouldn't go away. It led to the conclusion that ttf fonts clearly screwed everything up. Other fonts seemed to work fine. Checked xorg, and freetype2 was loaded as a module and installed, bitmap was loaded as a module, blah blah. I made a new account just out of curiosity..... amazingly, the fonts were weird but working properly. No more strange corruption. So, I went around looking for font folders or whatnot to get rid of in the hopes that starting over would fix it.

It did fix it.

I think all I did was..

rm -r ~/.fontconfig ~/.fonts ~/.fonts.conf and rebooted for grins. It worked fine for me \o/. Even better, installing ttf-dejavu and all the crap above after that also worked properly after that.

However, I would note that occasionally when I would open konsole, it would be screwed up again. Closing it and opening it again fixed it. I did fc-cache -fs afterwards (as the NORMAL user) in the hopes it would cure that and I haven't seen it happen since, though it could be a coincidence.

LONG STORY SHORT:

(normal user)
rm -r ~/.fontconfig ~/.fonts ~/.fonts.conf
fc-cache -fs
reboot
Good to go if xorg has the right modules and all the ttf stuff is installed.

Good luck smile

Edit: ...sigh. Wtf. Plasma randomly crashed, and the fonts are corrupted again, and none of the above folders exist anymore...

Edit2: .....wtf? logging out and in after the above crash, everything is correct again. except konsole, which (like usual after installing ttf stuff) is corrupted until closing it once then opening it again. i wish someone would figure out how to permanently deal with this.

Edit3: It seems after everything is 'fixed' there are a few things that aren't, so I suspect there's another font file/folder somewhere I need to get rid of. alt+f2 brings up krunner or whatever, and the fonts are totally corrupted as before. I'll post if I figured it out, though it's not a high priority atm.

Last edited by FrozenFox (2009-03-24 06:49:15)

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#3 2009-03-23 15:15:20

trebuchet
Member
From: London, UK
Registered: 2009-03-08
Posts: 6

Re: How to install gecko-mediaplayer without corrupting kde fonts

Thanks for posting all that. It's good to know it's not just me. I'd pretty much given up on this thread and just came back here today on the off-chance.

I have to admit, I have no idea why the fonts are getting corrupted in this way. I've just come back to linux after four years and this is the first time I've made a serious stab at using it as my main desktop OS (previously used it almost exclusively as a webserver). In the time I've been away the whole desktop experience has improved massively and overall I'm really impressed with where it has got to. The desktop I've got now is stable and looks great (including the fonts), so I've decided to just avoid using the deja-vu fonts until I've got enough spare time to get to grips with the font server and what's going wrong.

In the meantime thanks very much for posting your research. If you find out any more please keep putting it up. I'd like to get to the bottom of it too.

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#4 2009-03-24 13:34:04

FrozenFox
Member
From: College Station, TX
Registered: 2008-03-23
Posts: 422
Website

Re: How to install gecko-mediaplayer without corrupting kde fonts

Posting progress as you requested.

At some point today, in temporarily moving folders (.blah to OLD.blah) to see if I could find the source of the issue since I honestly didn't have a clue where to start beyond knowing common settings files/folders and kde folders, I made the problem permanent in konqueror as well as krunner or whatnot and happen twice on loading konsole instead of once -- most of the time the issue would go away after opening konsole 2 times (ie 3rd time = the charm. working text instead of weird garbage).

I've seemingly tracked the problem at this point down to a single file. I've repeatedly replaced and removed it with logout/login and things were screwed up/clean when expected (the file was removed). However, more overwhelmingly unlikely coincidences have happened to me before, so I won't say for 100% sure, but 95% will have to do. I'm not sure where in the file the problem is though. If anyone else with this issue wants to try their luck, it's

~/.kde4/share/config/kdeglobals

I'm not sure if it is necessary to have the things done in the prior post I made in this thread in addition to fixing this file, but it's too late for me to go back and test that now.

EDIT:

I appear to have found the problem.
Which may be fixed with or without the suggestions from my prior post, I will stress again. I cannot test that, as I no longer have the folders to test with. Anyway, I'm testing some more now with this below stuff to be sure.

In ~/.kde4/share/config/kdeglobals,

there is this line under the area marked [General]    ...

XftSubPixel=vrgb

Removing it makes all work fine again on logout/login. Add it, and everything is screwed up again.

EDIT2:

Yep! It reproducibly fixes all the screwed up rendering problems to remove that line. I'm not sure why it's defaulting to subpixel hinting stuff, and only doing so in some apps for that matter! The fonts area in systemsettings has everything set to the defaults pretty much. I'm happy I can use alt+f2 again and not have to deal with re-opening proggies multiple times to be able to read the fonts XD

Hopefully this helped you or someone else.

Last edited by FrozenFox (2009-03-24 14:08:46)

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#5 2009-03-30 12:26:56

trebuchet
Member
From: London, UK
Registered: 2009-03-08
Posts: 6

Re: How to install gecko-mediaplayer without corrupting kde fonts

Hi Frozen Fox. That's great news, thanks very much for posting it. This actually chimes with something I was reading just the other day, here:

http://www.nabble.com/blurry-fonts-at-Q … 48606.html

Work is very busy for me lately and I haven't had a chance to try and fix this on my machine so I'm really grateful you figured it out. It's good to know I can now install those fonts when I want to use an app that needs them.

Cheers!

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