[SOLVED] Re: Debian: none of the GNUStep application starts. Error:

[Zhang Weiwu]

Niels Grewe wrote:
> On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 06:45:05PM +0800, Zhang Weiwu wrote:
>   
> > 2009-05-06 18:38:16.098 Terminal[2739] The font specified for NSFont, 
> > Helvetica, can't be found.
> >     
>
> I believe I already ran into this one: If I'm not mistaken, the cairo
> backend will use fontconfig, so you should try to set the NSFont (and
> NSBoldFont) defaults to one of the fonts available via fontconfig (the
> "fc-list"-command will output a list of available fonts). That said, I
> highly suspect that your segfault is unrelated to the font issue.
>   
Hi thanks I solved it with:
$ defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSFont 'DejaVu Sans'
The segfault disappeared after font setting. Although I could not 
understand why fc-list does not list Helvetica which is a default 
installed font.

I more or less consider this is a packager's mistake. I am using a fresh 
Debian installation just installed yesterday and have not any customized 
configuration. Knowing the default debian installation does not have 
Helvetic in fc-list the packager should default to a usable font. After 
all many people choose to use a distribution instead of compiling 
everything manually is because they want the task to fight dependency & 
configuration an optional task instead of mandantory.