[arch-general] First Problem with pacman - Need to understand why

[David C. Rankin]

Vincent Van Houtte wrote:
> Op Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:45:10 -0500
> schreef "David C. Rankin" <drankinatty at suddenlinkmail.com>:
> <SNIP>
>> no /usr/share/fonts/TTF directory. I had a /usr/share/fonts/truetype
>> directory so I just softlinked the missing TTF to truetype to get rid
>> to the error on startx. startx liked the solution.
> 
> Softlinking is just patching the system without solving the underlying
> problem - it should be discouraged.
> 
> Why that directory wasn't there is because you didn't have any TTF
> fonts at that time. Why the other dir was there, is probably due to
> some leftovers or maybe a package (from AUR?) that didn't extract the
> fonts in the right place? I don't know.

No, that's my fault too. I liked my true type fonts, so I brought them with me
for the Arch Linux install;-) I just mounted the opensuse install which resides
on /dev/mapper/nvidia_fdaacfde to /mnt/suse and copied my truetype directory over.

> 
> I do know that X defines the FontPath in xorg.conf, so if startx
> complained, you could simply change the FontPath in /etx/X11/xorg.conf.
> And IIRC, the app 'fontconfig' can do ao this for you.
> 
> Vincent

	That was the strange part. Somewhere Arch is setting /usr/share/fonts/TTF as a
default directory to load on X startup. My files section looked like this when
X was complaining about no /usr/share/fonts/TTF:

Section "Files"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/URW"
#  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
  FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/uni:unscaled"
  FontPath     "/opt/kde/share/fonts"
  FontPath     "/usr/local/share/fonts"
  InputDevices "/dev/gpmdata"
  InputDevices "/dev/input/mice"
EndSection

	Dunno? Right now I'm using the default xorg.conf generated by nvidia-xconfig
with only my old monitor definition cut and pasted in. (though from looking at
Xorg.0.log it wasn't necessary because the EDID info was recognized) The
default xorg.conf contains no font path information, so I presume the startup
just parses /usr/share/fonts for all dirs with mkfontdir information available.

	Right now, I'm just tickled to be up and running with kde3 and I'm working out
the details to make the config permanent. Thanks.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
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