Mailing List Archive

> When I run ethereal on RH7, I got blobs output but tethereal is OK.
> Guy Harris wants me to send the output of xlsfonts to this email, and
> hope someone could help me find out what is wrong.

******That's why I want you to send me the output of xlsfonts!!!!!!******

We're trying to find out *why* the default fixed-width font
specification in Ethereal shows up on *SOME* platforms as blobs (it does
*NOT* show up in that fashion with the Exceed X server on my NT box at
work, nor does it show up in that fashion on the Accelerated-X server on
FreeBSD, Debian, or Solaris on my machine at home).

The *previous* default specification didn't work on some systems,
either; for some unknown reason the system couldn't find the Lucida
Typewriter font.

We're trying to find a way of specifying a default fixed-width font that's
likely to work on all platforms; it may be that we just have to punt to
"fixed" on UNIX, but I'd at least like to understand why what we're
seeing is happening, rather than just randomly trying things until
something works, as that may produce something that works in the places
where we tried it but breaks somewhere else.

People should *not* expect that if they ask a question on
"ethereal-users" they will necessarily get an instant fix. People run
Ethereal on a wider variety of platforms than the developers of Ethereal
have - different operating systems, different network cards, different X
servers, etc.. As such, we may required *YOUR* help in debugging the
problem - you may have to run commands and provide us with information,
and test stuff we ask you to test. (This is likely to be the case with
many other pieces of free software; heck, it's often the case even with
*commercial* software, as I can testify from N years working as a
software developer....)

I don't have XFree86 on any of my machines, because when I got them
XFree86 didn't support my video card; XFree86 3.3.6 does, but XFree86
4.x doesn't yet support it, so if this is a problem caused by XFree86
4.x, there's not much I can do to try to debug it *except* to ask the
people who have the problem to provide me with information.

I also don't happen to have recent versions of Red Hat on any of my
machines, so if it's a Red Hat problem rather than an XFree86 problem,
there's not much I can do about it, either.

I want to kill this problem off once and for all; I don't just want to
keep handing out workarounds for this problem, which would ease the pain
of individual users, but wouldn't keep users from experiencing the pain
in the first place, as they'll keep asking "why isn't this working?" and
we'll have to keep handing out workarounds.

So please send me the output of "xlsfonts" on your machine, and also run
the command

xfd -fn -*-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*

and report what it lists as the font name at the top of the window
(it'll be a string of words, and numbers, with dashes in between them).
Do your part to help out the rest of the users of Ethereal....

(If anybody *else* has a platform on which 0.8.12, by default, picks a
font that displays as square blobs, and is willing to run the
aforementioned commands, please do so....)

On Thu, Oct 12, 2000 at 11:54:26AM -0700, Guy Harris wrote:
> > When I run ethereal on RH7, I got blobs output but tethereal is OK.
> > Guy Harris wants me to send the output of xlsfonts to this email, and
> > hope someone could help me find out what is wrong.
>
> ******That's why I want you to send me the output of xlsfonts!!!!!!******

It was attached. I think there might be an attachment problem with
Mailman, the new list manager, because I'm pretty sure I had the same
problem earlier this week, in which *my* copy of the e-mail didn't have
the attachment, but another copy did. I thought it was our Notes server,
but maybe it's the mailing list.

Attached is the list. (I double-checked, too)

--gilbert

> It was attached.

OK, I got it (that mail had been building up for a while, though; a lot
of times somebody will report a problem, and then a reply will go out
asking for more information, and perhaps that continues for a few
cycles, but eventually the information stops coming - that may mean the
problem doesn't get solved; I apologize to Mr. fsd for making him the
target of that one, but hopefully potential future appropriate targets
will read it and take heed - you may not pay money for free software,
but you can contribute in other ways, even if you can't write code, as
helping the developers track down a bug is a contribution).

The font list appears to have a ton of
"misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed" fonts in it, including some with an
iso8859-1 encoding, so Ethereal could have found such a font, but it may
have found one with another encoding.

The "xfd" command information would be useful here, as it might indicate
what font gets selected, by default, by the font expression Ethereal
uses as its default.

> > When I run ethereal on RH7, I got blobs output but tethereal is OK.
> > Guy Harris wants me to send the output of xlsfonts to this email, and
> > hope someone could help me find out what is wrong.
>
> ******That's why I want you to send me the output of xlsfonts!!!!!!******

Oh, hell, never mind, I'm an idiot.

As per my other mail, the font list appears to show all the necessary
fonts; could you please run the command

> xfd -fn -*-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*
>
> and report what it lists as the font name at the top of the window
> (it'll be a string of words, and numbers, with dashes in between them).

That'll probably indicate what font Ethereal is choosing as the
fixed-width font.

Then, after doing that, select the "Properties" menu item from the
"Edit" menu, select the "GUI" tab from the "Properties" dialog box, and
press the "Fonts..." button; it'll let you select a different font.
Click "OK" once you've selected a font, and then click "Apply" in the
"Properties" dialog box to test the font; when you have a font that
works, click "Save" in the "Properties" dialog box to permanently save
your font choice.