I couldn't find a more appropriate place to ask this question. Please feel free to point me to such a place if one exists. ---- Using a completely up-to-date 32-bit arch system, I am trying to make some fonts available to X. My understanding of the process is: 1. Put the fonts in a directory. 2. Since these are scalable fonts, run mkfontscale in the directory. 3. Run mkfontdir in the directory. 4. run xset +fp <directory name> So what I did: 0. Created the directory ~/.fonts. 1. Put the fonts in ~/.fonts. At this point the contents of the directory looks like this (sorry about the wrapping): lrwxrwxrwx 1 n7dr users 39 Apr 22 17:08 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -> /home/n7dr/fonts/CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf lrwxrwxrwx 1 n7dr users 34 Apr 22 17:08 N7DR_SFTT1000.afm -> /home/n7dr/fonts/N7DR_SFTT1000.afm lrwxrwxrwx 1 n7dr users 34 Apr 22 17:08 N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -> /home/n7dr/fonts/N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb 2. Ran mkfontscale in ~/.fonts. This created the file fonts.scale, which had the following contents: 33 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-adobe-standard CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-ascii-0 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-ibm-cp437 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-ibm-cp850 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-ibm-cp852 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-ibm-cp866 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso10646-1 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-10 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-13 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-15 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-2 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-3 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-4 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-5 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-8 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-9 CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-koi8-e CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-koi8-r CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-koi8-ru CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-koi8-u CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-koi8-uni CourierNewPSMTN7DR.ttf -monotype-courier new n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-microsoft-cp1252 N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-standard N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-ascii-0 N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1 N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1 N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-15 N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-9 N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-koi8-r N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-koi8-ru N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-koi8-u N7DR_SFTT1000.pfb -misc-computer modern n7dr-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-microsoft-cp1252 3. Ran mkfontdir in ~/.fonts. This created the file fonts.dir, which was identical to fonts.scale. 4. One piece of documentation I read said that X automatically includes ~/.fonts in its path, but running xset q did not include ~/.fonts in the directory list. So I ran: xset +fp /home/n7dr/.fonts But now we come to the problem. This command returns: xset: bad font path element (#37), possible causes are: Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions Directory missing fonts.dir Incorrect font server address or syntax But: a. the directory obviously exists, and it has permissions rwx for the user. b. The directory contains the file fonts.dir c. The syntax looks OK. So what is xset complaining about? (I suspect that the problem lies in the *contents* of fonts.dir, since if I create a dummy version of the file, I don't receive the error. But since the file was automatically created, I don't know what might be wrong, nor how to correct it. Maybe my suspicion is wrong, though.) Doc -- Web: http://www.sff.net/people/N7DR