I've recently installed 2008.1 and have noticed that - I'm using
blackbox as a window manager - that changing styles is incredibly slow
in comparison to 2007 (or anything earlier!).
From selecting the style (background, fonts in window titles, colours
etc) it can take around 20 seconds for the new style to appear - this
is on a m/c with 1.5 gig of memory which doesn't appear to be too
heavily loaded.

When I'm waiting for the change to happen I'm seeing X as using lots of cpu.
This delay happens both with plain styles and with picture
backgrounds - and running the root command separately doesn't seem
slow, so I'm guessing something to do with change of fonts between styles

I've just installed xfontsel and that takes around 10-12 seconds for
the window to appear and I get the message:

Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion

when changing the style, I see the following in .xsession-errors I
don't see that message but I do see

Warning: missing charset 'JISX0208.1983-0' in fontset
Warning: missing charset 'KSC5601.1987-0' in fontset
Warning: missing charset 'GB2312.1980-0' in fontset

I don't see any mention of fonts in xorg.conf - is this correct for
this release?

Any thoughts? other possible culprits?

Robert
--
La grenouille songe..dans son château d'eau
Links and things http://rmstar.blogspot.com/

Robert Marshall wrote:
> I've recently installed 2008.1 and have noticed that - I'm using
> blackbox as a window manager - that changing styles is incredibly slow
> in comparison to 2007 (or anything earlier!).
> From selecting the style (background, fonts in window titles, colours
> etc) it can take around 20 seconds for the new style to appear - this
> is on a m/c with 1.5 gig of memory which doesn't appear to be too
> heavily loaded.
>
> When I'm waiting for the change to happen I'm seeing X as using lots of cpu.
> This delay happens both with plain styles and with picture
> backgrounds - and running the root command separately doesn't seem
> slow, so I'm guessing something to do with change of fonts between styles

I can't help with the above, unless this is indeed related to fonts.

> I've just installed xfontsel and that takes around 10-12 seconds for
> the window to appear and I get the message:
>
> Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
>
> when changing the style, I see the following in .xsession-errors I
> don't see that message but I do see
>
> Warning: missing charset 'JISX0208.1983-0' in fontset
> Warning: missing charset 'KSC5601.1987-0' in fontset
> Warning: missing charset 'GB2312.1980-0' in fontset
>
> I don't see any mention of fonts in xorg.conf - is this correct for
> this release?

Yes. Fonts are now specified elsewhere. See /etc/fonts/conf.d for
some of them.

> Any thoughts? other possible culprits?

It appears you have multiple languages installed for your
machine (Japanese, British English, ?Korean?). In Mandriva 9
or maybe 10, these were aliased to fonts held in one directory
under one name. Starting sometime in the last couple of years
or so, the fonts have been located in a different place, and I
think they are different files. The old aliases remain. They
can be ignored, as the new versions/aliases will be found by
a program searching for them. FWIW, I think the change from old
fonts/aliases to new ones involved a shift from a path name
including directory ttf to one including TTF in the corresponding
position. These identify the same directory in WinBlows, but Linux
is case-sensitive.

I think your delay may be something timing out while the system
software tries to find the old files, and it takes a little while
for the timeout to occur.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, Jim Beard wrote:

>
> Robert Marshall wrote:
>> I've recently installed 2008.1 and have noticed that - I'm using
>> blackbox as a window manager - that changing styles is incredibly
>> slow in comparison to 2007 (or anything earlier!). From selecting
>> the style (background, fonts in window titles, colours etc) it can
>> take around 20 seconds for the new style to appear - this is on a
>> m/c with 1.5 gig of memory which doesn't appear to be too heavily
>> loaded.
>>
>> When I'm waiting for the change to happen I'm seeing X as using
>> lots of cpu. This delay happens both with plain styles and with
>> picture backgrounds - and running the root command separately
>> doesn't seem slow, so I'm guessing something to do with change of
>> fonts between styles
>
> I can't help with the above, unless this is indeed related to fonts.
>

Well, thanks for the response! (see below)

>> I've just installed xfontsel and that takes around 10-12 seconds
>> for the window to appear and I get the message:
>>
>> Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
>>
>> when changing the style, I see the following in .xsession-errors I
>> don't see that message but I do see
>>
>> Warning: missing charset 'JISX0208.1983-0' in fontset
>> Warning: missing charset 'KSC5601.1987-0' in fontset
>> Warning: missing charset 'GB2312.1980-0' in fontset
>>
>> I don't see any mention of fonts in xorg.conf - is this correct for
>> this release?
>
> Yes. Fonts are now specified elsewhere. See /etc/fonts/conf.d for
> some of them.

Yep lots there!

>
>> Any thoughts? other possible culprits?
>
> It appears you have multiple languages installed for your
> machine (Japanese, British English, ?Korean?).

Can't remember what I specified on the install but would be surprised
if I explicitly specified those languages (unless there was a select
all option!)

<snip>
>
> I think your delay may be something timing out while the system
> software tries to find the old files, and it takes a little while
> for the timeout to occur.
>

That's my guess too - though the high hogging the cpu of X might argue
against that, maybe I need to monitor what files blackbox (and X!) is trying to
open. I'm a little puzzled that this is happening with a clean
install, I'm also going to review what's in /usr/local some of which
is pre-install

Robert
--
La grenouille songe..dans son château d'eau
Links and things http://rmstar.blogspot.com/

On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:50:41 -0400, Robert Marshall <spam@chezmarshall.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

> Warning: missing charset 'JISX0208.1983-0' in fontset
> Warning: missing charset 'KSC5601.1987-0' in fontset
> Warning: missing charset 'GB2312.1980-0' in fontset
> I don't see any mention of fonts in xorg.conf - is this correct for
> this release?

Mandriva stopped using the xorg font server (XFS), unless manually selected,
in 2008.0. See
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases...no_longer_used

Do you have any dangling symlinks in /etc/X11/fontpath.d/ ?

That's the only thing I can think of, off hand, that might be causing a font
problem.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change nomail.afraid.org to ody.ca to reply by email.
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use in usenet. Feel free to use it yourself.)

On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, David W. Hodgins wrote:

> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:50:41 -0400, Robert Marshall <spam@chezmarshall.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Warning: missing charset 'JISX0208.1983-0' in fontset
>> Warning: missing charset 'KSC5601.1987-0' in fontset
>> Warning: missing charset 'GB2312.1980-0' in fontset
>> I don't see any mention of fonts in xorg.conf - is this correct for
>> this release?
>
> Mandriva stopped using the xorg font server (XFS), unless manually
> selected, in 2008.0. See
> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases...no_longer_used

They need to hide http://www.mandrivaclub.com/xwiki/bi.../KB/XwinXtroub
which came up as a result of some searching I was doing for this problem,
you don't find out how old the infor is until the foot of the page...


>
> Do you have any dangling symlinks in /etc/X11/fontpath.d/ ?

No - all the links in there point to directories which exist


Robert
--
La grenouille songe..dans son château d'eau
Links and things http://rmstar.blogspot.com/

On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:53:17 -0400, Robert Marshall <spam@chezmarshall.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

> No - all the links in there point to directories which exist

I'm inclined to suspect a problem with the video driver. Try switching
to the vesa video driver, and see if the problem still exists.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change nomail.afraid.org to ody.ca to reply by email.
(nomail.afraid.org has been set up specifically for
use in usenet. Feel free to use it yourself.)

Robert Marshall wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, David W. Hodgins wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:50:41 -0400, Robert Marshall <spam@chezmarshall.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Warning: missing charset 'JISX0208.1983-0' in fontset
>>> Warning: missing charset 'KSC5601.1987-0' in fontset
>>> Warning: missing charset 'GB2312.1980-0' in fontset
>>> I don't see any mention of fonts in xorg.conf - is this correct for
>>> this release?
>> Mandriva stopped using the xorg font server (XFS), unless manually
>> selected, in 2008.0. See
>> http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases...no_longer_used
>
> They need to hide http://www.mandrivaclub.com/xwiki/bi.../KB/XwinXtroub
> which came up as a result of some searching I was doing for this problem,
> you don't find out how old the infor is until the foot of the page...
>
>
>> Do you have any dangling symlinks in /etc/X11/fontpath.d/ ?
>
> No - all the links in there point to directories which exist

It is not a dangling symlink (at least on my system, I have a
possibly irregular set of directories due to a few programs I
have used). The problem is in the actual file location for the
font and the aliases indexed to it.

E.g. the JISX0208.1983-0 font was superceded by font JISX0208.1990.
In /usr/share/fonts/japanese/ttf/japanese-extra there
exist fonts.dir fonts.scale kochi-gothic-subst.ttf and
kochi-mincho-subst.ttf. JISX0208.1983 is aliased to the two
ttf fonts. This I think is the old set of fonts.

If one looks under /usr/share/fonts, under the TTF
directory (note capitalization), one finds,

[jim@localhost fonts]$ ls -laR TTF/ja*
TTF/japanese:
total 9000
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-06-20 21:15 ./
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 2008-06-08 21:32 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1095 2008-02-25 23:02 fonts.alias
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3955 2008-02-25 23:02 fonts.dir
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 55 2008-06-08 14:46 fonts.scale ->
.../../../../../usr/share/fonts/TTF/japanese/fonts.alias
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4554452 2008-02-25 23:02 umeplus-gothic.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4619076 2008-02-25 23:02 umeplus-p-gothic.ttf

TTF/japanese-ipamona:
total 11852
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-06-08 21:31 ./
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 2008-06-08 21:32 ../
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4292 2007-12-18 19:34 fonts.dir*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4292 2007-12-18 19:34 fonts.scale*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2195824 2007-12-18 19:34 IPAMonaGothic.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2834360 2007-12-18 19:34 IPAMonaMincho.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2109788 2007-12-18 19:34 IPAMonaPGothic.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2838544 2007-12-18 19:34 IPAMonaPMincho.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2100844 2007-12-18 19:34 IPAMonaUIGothic.ttf

TTF/japanese-mplus_ipagothic:
total 12016
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-06-08 21:32 ./
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 2008-06-08 21:32 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2 2008-06-08 21:32 fonts.dir
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 492 2008-06-08 21:32 fonts.scale
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2073040 2007-12-18 19:34 M+1P+IPAG-circle.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1977316 2007-12-18 19:34 M+1P+IPAG.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2072060 2007-12-18 19:34 M+1VM+IPAG-circle.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2075304 2007-12-18 19:34 M+2P+IPAG-circle.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1979628 2007-12-18 19:34 M+2P+IPAG.ttf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2074240 2007-12-18 19:34 M+2VM+IPAG-circle.ttf

Then, if we look specifically for the JISX0208 font under TTF with
grep -R:

[jim@localhost fonts]$ grep -R 0208 TTF/ja*
Binary file TTF/japanese/umeplus-p-gothic.ttf matches
TTF/japanese/fonts.dir:umeplus-p-gothic.ttf -misc-UmePlus P
Gothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese/fonts.dir:umeplus-gothic.ttf -misc-UmePlus
Gothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0
Binary file TTF/japanese/umeplus-gothic.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaPGothic.ttf matches
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonagothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonagothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaMincho.ttf
-misc-ipamonamincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaMincho.ttf
-misc-ipamonamincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaPGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonapgothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaPGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonapgothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaPMincho.ttf
-misc-ipamonapmincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaPMincho.ttf
-misc-ipamonapmincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaUIGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonauigothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:IPAMonaUIGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonauigothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:sazanami-gothic.ttf -misc-sazanami
gothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:sazanami-gothic.ttf -misc-sazanami
gothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:sazanami-mincho.ttf -misc-sazanami
mincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.dir:sazanami-mincho.ttf -misc-sazanami
mincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaGothic.ttf matches
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonagothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonagothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaMincho.ttf
-misc-ipamonamincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaMincho.ttf
-misc-ipamonamincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaPGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonapgothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaPGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonapgothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaPMincho.ttf
-misc-ipamonapmincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaPMincho.ttf
-misc-ipamonapmincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaUIGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonauigothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:IPAMonaUIGothic.ttf
-misc-ipamonauigothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:sazanami-gothic.ttf -misc-sazanami
gothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:sazanami-gothic.ttf -misc-sazanami
gothic-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:sazanami-mincho.ttf -misc-sazanami
mincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1983-0
TTF/japanese-ipamona/fonts.scale:sazanami-mincho.ttf -misc-sazanami
mincho-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-jisx0208.1990-0
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaPMincho.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaMincho.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaUIGothic.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-mplus_ipagothic/M+1P+IPAG-circle.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-mplus_ipagothic/M+2VM+IPAG-circle.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-mplus_ipagothic/M+2P+IPAG-circle.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-mplus_ipagothic/M+1VM+IPAG-circle.ttf matches

If the system's search for the font goes to TTF/japanese, the
binaries have it but there is no alias in that directory to make
the connection. If the sytem goes on to ttf/japanese-extra or to
TTF/japanese-ipamona, it will find in the former an alias to the
1983 font and in the latter aliases for both the 1983 and the 1990
fonts, both of which point to a binary font file in the directory.
Then, in the japanese-mplus_ipagothic directory, as with the
TTF/japanese directory, there are binaries that provide the font, but
no font.dir with aliases to make the connection.

Methinks the system is having problems finding what it wants
in the place(s) it expects, is timing out, and is then continuing
onward. Odds are it has found all it really needs, that an old
program will call for an old font in a way that is findable, and
a (currently) proper call for a font will be serviced immediately.
And X11/KDE generates an error message saying the JISX0208.1983 font
could not be found, despite availability in multiple locations.

If the above confuses you, consider what the software providing
fonts has to contend with. <g>

Separately, on install, there is indeed a option to install all
languages. Click it, and you will have all sorts of fonts, i18n-
related files, and foreign-language help files.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:30:45 -0400, Jim Beard <jdbeard@patriot.net> wrote:

> TTF/japanese directory, there are binaries that provide the font, but
> no font.dir with aliases to make the connection.

Time to rebuild the fonts.dir and fonts.scale files, perhaps.

# cd /usr/share/fonts
# find . -type d -exec mkfontscale {} \;
# find . -type d -exec mkfontsdir {} \;
# xset fp rehash

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--
Change nomail.afraid.org to ody.ca to reply by email.
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David W. Hodgins wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:30:45 -0400, Jim Beard <jdbeard@patriot.net> wrote:
>
>> TTF/japanese directory, there are binaries that provide the font, but
>> no font.dir with aliases to make the connection.
>
> Time to rebuild the fonts.dir and fonts.scale files, perhaps.
>
> # cd /usr/share/fonts
> # find . -type d -exec mkfontscale {} \;
> # find . -type d -exec mkfontsdir {} \;
> # xset fp rehash

Did that. This removed all aliases involving JISX0208.19xx
from all fonts.dir and fonts.scale files. A quick check of
a couple of Japanese websites shows that my system is still
finding fonts needed. Whether this will remain true remains
uncertain.

Perhaps I should exit KDE and see if I still get errors
WRT the JISX0208.1983 font not found. (Misc: Another
problem may be that the name is sometimes jisx0208 rather
than JISX0208 -- but that was obvious from the results
from grep -R 0208 * .)

[jim@localhost fonts]$ grep -R 0208 TTF/ja*
Binary file TTF/japanese/umeplus-p-gothic.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese/umeplus-gothic.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaPGothic.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaGothic.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaPMincho.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaMincho.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-ipamona/IPAMonaUIGothic.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-mplus_ipagothic/M+1P+IPAG-circle.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-mplus_ipagothic/M+2VM+IPAG-circle.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-mplus_ipagothic/M+2P+IPAG-circle.ttf matches
Binary file TTF/japanese-mplus_ipagothic/M+1VM+IPAG-circle.ttf matches
[jim@localhost fonts]$ grep -R 0208 ttf/ja*
Binary file ttf/japanese-extra/kochi-gothic-subst.ttf matches
Binary file ttf/japanese-extra/kochi-mincho-subst.ttf matches

jim b.
--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

> David W. Hodgins wrote:
>> Time to rebuild the fonts.dir and fonts.scale files, perhaps.
>>
>> # cd /usr/share/fonts
>> # find . -type d -exec mkfontscale {} \;
>> # find . -type d -exec mkfontsdir {} \;
>> # xset fp rehash

Jim Beard wrote:
> Did that. This removed all aliases involving JISX0208.19xx
> from all fonts.dir and fonts.scale files. A quick check of
> a couple of Japanese websites shows that my system is still
> finding fonts needed. Whether this will remain true remains
> uncertain.
>
> Perhaps I should exit KDE and see if I still get errors
> WRT the JISX0208.1983 font not found. (Misc: Another
> problem may be that the name is sometimes jisx0208 rather
> than JISX0208 -- but that was obvious from the results
> from grep -R 0208 * .)

Exited from KDE. Relaunched KDE. Exited from KDE.
There was no complaint about the JISX0208.1983 font
missing.

I pulled up Firefox 3 and checked a couple of Japanese
websites. Everything looks good, and it is too late
tonight to tinker with further tests. Exhaustive testing
is something I do not even want to think about. I'll just
proceed onward, and if I hit a wall, worry about how to
go over, under, or through that then.

Thanks for the instructions. I've got them stored for
future OS updates.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.