[GRASS-user] NVIZ: unable to set font type, style and size of labels

[Tom Russo]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 12:04:06PM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <jdmonto0 at gmail.com> flavor, containing:
>    I have the same problem under Ubuntu 12.04. *I have compiled grass from
>    sources and I have installed it also through repositories, and I get the
>    same issue when I try to place either a label, or the legend, or the
>    arrow. I thing it is a kind of bug.
>    Here is the log error that I get:
>    Error: Unable to load font
>    Error: Unable to load font

I do not know the exact cause of this for you (I haven't been using nviz on  
Ubutntu much, though I do have it installed) --- but a number of other older
programs have discovered that Ubuntu's decision to eliminate certain old-style
bitmapped fonts from the default X distribution has been a problem.  I just
took a peek at the NVIS source, and it *does* appear that what it wants to use
is the bitmapped Helvetica font, one of the ones that would be missing on a
stock Ubuntu system.  So this same problem might be the cause here.

Try installing the xfonts-100dpi and xfonts-75dpi packages and see if the
problem goes away.  These two packages used to be installed by default on
Ubuntu systems until very, very recently.  If it doesn't work immediately
after installing them, you might also have to do a 
"xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi" to instruct 
the running X server to add the new fonts (they'll be picked up on a restart, 
but possibly not right after installation of the packages)

If that doesn't do the trick, then I'm off base with this guess.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
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