Re: -urw-* font is always used

[Jan D.]

>     My problem (I think) was that I started an Emacs that used the Gnome 
> libraries 
>     (i.e. GTK and newer fontconfig), and then the other non-GTK apps used the 
> older 
>     fontconfig.  These apps then displayed empty boxes, because the newer 
>     fontconfig wrote a ~/.fonts.cache-1 that the older fontconfig apparently 
> did 
>     not understand.  Or it can just be a bug in fontconfig that corrupts 
>     ~/.fonts.cache-1.
> 
>     If it happens again, you can always try to remove ~/.fonts.cache-1 and 
> restart 
>     Emacs, to see if you have the same problem.
> 
> Can you please write a PROBLEMS entry about this problem?

I've added this to PROBLEMS:

* Characters are displayed as empty boxes or with wrong font under X.

This can occur when two different versions of FontConfig are used.
For example, XFree86 4.3.0 has one version and Gnome usually comes
with a newer version.  Emacs compiled with --with-gtk will then use
the newer version.  In most cases the problem can be temporarily
fixed by stopping the application that has the error (it can be
Emacs or any other application), removing ~/.fonts.cache-1,
and then start the application again.
If removing ~/.fonts.cache-1 and restarting doesn't help, the
application with problem must be recompiled with the same version
of FontConfig as the rest of the system uses.  For KDE, it is
sufficient to recompile Qt.

        Jan D.