Re: Unable to load any usable iso8859 font

[Dan Moulding <dmoulding at gmail dot com>]

On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Dan Moulding <dmoulding@gmail.com> wrote:
> I typically update my Cygwin installations about once a month, and
> rarely run into any difficulties. However, this morning after updating
> I could no longer start any X applications due to some apparent font
> problems. Please note that I successfully installed the *new* Cygwin/X
> a couple of months ago, and previously resolved some of the seemingly
> more common font problems (like "boxes" showing up in emacs).
>
> This time, I was getting "Unable to load any usable iso8859 font"
> errors anytime I'd try to start xterm. I searched the FAQs and the
> web, but was unable to find any suggestions that led to a solution. At
> one point, while trying to fix the problem, I also got the "could not
> open default font 'fixed'" error, but none of the solutions listed in
> the FAQ were applicable (either the problem described was obviously
> not a match, or the solution, like re-installing all fonts, had
> already been tried).
>

I updated to the latest packages today (2/10/09) because I was hopeful
that some of the recent font-related X.org fixes would have solved
this problem. After updating, I still received the "Unable to load any
usable iso8859 font" error.

I decided to uninstall *all* X11 related packages from my system, and
then reinstall a new X.org installation by selecting just those things
I knew I would need (e.g. fonts) and things I'd want (e.g. emacs-X11,
xterm, etc.). I did exactly that and it seems to have worked. I no
longer get the "Unable to load any usable iso8859 font" error when
trying to start xterm.

On a side note, during this process it became apparent that the plain
emacs package depends on xemacs-emacs-common which depends on xemacs
which depends on a bunch of X.org stuff. This seems to imply that you
can no longer install emacs without also installing X. This doesn't
seem right, but to be honest, I can't remember if, prior to the major
X.org update, installing emacs without X worked because I've always
used them both.

Cheers,

-- Dan Moulding

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