Subject: bug#11813: bug#11850: bug#11813: bug#11850: crash (null font) running emacs built from git

From: Chong Yidong <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:18:33 +0800

Left Right <[email-masked]> writes:

> Nimbus is indeed a font installed on my system (screenshot attached).
> But it has bold face (you can see it on the screenshot). Though the
> font which I was referring to as "not installed myself" is the other
> one called "variable-pitch" it is used in the "welcome" buffer.

The Emacs welcome screen uses `variable-pitch' everywhere except for the
text "Control-g", which is the part that does not display properly in
your screenshot.  The rest of the welcome screen, which uses
`variable-pitch', displays fine in the screenshot.  So the problem is
with the `default' face, not `variable-pitch'.

> both GSettings and -lfreetype are "no", but the configuration script
> didn't ask me to install libfreetype although it is installed

OK, now I remember: we used to allow building with Freetype and without
Xft, but in Emacs 24 this was disabled because the non-xft freetype font
driver was poorly tested and slow.  So if you compile without Xft
support, Emacs doesn't use Freetype any more.

But Emacs should work fine without freetype, so that is not the bug.
Nimbus Mono does require Freetype, but if you compile without Xft, Emacs
shouldn't be looking for that font at all.  If you don't specify a font
in .Xresources or your init file, Emacs should try the following default
fonts (in sequence):

-adobe-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-*-140-*-*-c-*-iso8859-1
-*-*-medium-r-normal-*-*-140-*-*-c-*-iso8859-1
-*-*-medium-r-*-*-*-*-*-*-c-*-iso8859-1
-*-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-140-*-*-c-*-iso8859-1
fixed

I verified this by doing

./configure --with-xft=no
make
./src/emacs -q

Then Emacs displays the welcome screen fine, with

-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-200-75-75-c-100-iso8859-1

as the font for the `default' face.  (And if I do

M-x set-frame-font RET
-urw-nimbus mono l-normal-normal-normal-*-13-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 RET

Emacs signals an error saying it can't display that font, as expected.)

So I don't understand why your Emacs is trying to load Nimbus Mono.

Here's something to try: could you try making sure there are no X
resources specified, by doing

xrdb -remove

and running `emacs -Q' to eliminate all customizations?  Does the font
problem still show up in that case?