Missing fonts when upgrading to qt-3.3.3/kde-3.3

[James Richard Tyrer]

John Nielsen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just upgraded to qt-3.3.3 and kde-3.3.1 from 3.2 and saw to my horror that 
> most of my fonts were gone. Most notably the helvetica font which i use a lot 
> when reading web pages. In konqueror -> Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> 
> Fonts, the font list was filled in automaticly with kde-3.2. With kde-3.3, 
> only the first two font rows are filled in.
> 
> I appear to have lost all of the fixed sized fonts and only have the TTF and 
> Type1 fonts left.
> 
> I tried adding the missing fonts manually and it worked, but konqueror still 
> wont pick them up automaticly like it did before, and web page rendering is 
> still ugly.
> 
> I havent installed any special fonts other than the stuff that ships with 
> xorg, fontconfig, freetype and friends.
> 
> Has the qt/kde font handling changed between 3.2 and 3.3?
> 
> Has anyone else experienced this problem?
> 
> At this point, any RTFM pointers are most welcome. :-)

The pace to start trouble shooting is with FontConfig.  Qt uses FontConfig 
rather than the X font server to access fonts.

Open a Konsole and execute:

	fc-list Helvetica

If this doesn't list:
	Helvetica:style=Oblique
	Helvetica:style=Bold
	Helvetica:style=Regular
	Helvetica:style=Bold Oblique

you have problems.

Then check to see if FontConfig is finding the directory for the font.

As root, run:

	fc-cache -v

This will list the directories that FontConfig has cached.  Check to see that 
the directory containing Helvetica fonts is listed.

You might try running [as root]:

	fc-cache -f

and see if it fixes your problem.

These directories are listed in:

	/etc/fonts/fonts.conf
	/etc/fonts/local.conf

It is recommended that you use scalable fonts.

You can get Helvetica in the old Windows Adobe Acrobat Reader:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobatreader/win/3.x/ar302.exe

You have to extract this file with WINE or Windows.

Get the ATM files here:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/type/win/all/afmfiles/900-960/950/

Convert all file names to lower case and install in the usual manner.

Or, if you don't want to do that, it might be better to use URW Nimbus Sans L 
(the free clone of Helvetica) which should be on your system if you installed 
from a distro.  You can check for this with:

	fc-list "Nimbus Sans L"

Always use the quotes if the name has spaces in it.

--
JRT
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