Subject: Re: bug#6127: 24.0.50; crash because of missing font for menus

From: Jan Djärv <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 May 2010 09:01:03 +0200

2010-05-06 23:16, Peter Dyballa skrev:
> Hello!
>
> Trying to debug a failure in font handling by the X server – XQuartz
> 2.5.1 (xorg-server 1.8.0.902) – I removed some elements from Font Path.
> When I now open a menu either from menu-bar or by making it pop up, GNU
> Emacs reports:
>
> Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-frutiger
> linotype-bold-r-normal-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1" to type FontStruct
>
> It comes from the X resource
>
> Emacs*menu*font: -*-frutiger
> linotype-bold-r-normal-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1
>
> When the menus just open no crash happens. It also does not happen when
> I select an item from a menu I open from the menu-bar, as in this case,
> when I invoked the function to report a bug from the Help menu. The
> crash happens when I select a menu entry from a pop-up menu or close the
> pop-up menu after I have entered the next menu level. So it works to
> change text font size, but buffer selection or selection of another font
> or fontset from the next menu level lead to the crash, and just closing
> that menu unused as well.

I can't reproduce this.  Does it work if you remove that X resource, or if you 
put in a font that exists? You have to debug this.
Beware, that while menus are open, the keyboard and mouse are probably 
grabbed, so you should startt gdb outside the X environment.

In general, that message comes from the X toolkit as it tries to find your 
specified font but fails, long before any Emacs code is executed.  I don't 
know if we have a good strategy for handling bad configurations like this.  It 
is after all an error to ask for a font that doesn't exist.

>
> GNU Emacs 23.1.93 complains the same way about the font, but it never
> crashes.
>
> BTW, the X resource setting does not seem to work well: some other font
> is used, one, which is *always* available. I also remember that some
> update (bzr pull -v) mentioned a message that due to some changes in
> text handling of Xaw based menus (to display UTF-8 encoded text
> correctly) some X resources were changed. Where are these names recorded
> or documented?
>

C-h i m emacs <return> s faceName <return>

	Jan D.