Re: Rendering problem with AbiWord

On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:23:10 +0100
"Kio M. Smallwood" <k.smallwood@daxtra.com> wrote:

> Robert said:
> >
> > Greetings
> >
> > I am having trouble with creating or reading abiword documents. I
> > believe the problem started wiht the recent Xorg update but cannot
> > be sure.
> >
> > I am running FreeBSD 7.2 pre-release and all ports are up to date. I
> > have tried re-intalling abiword from ports and have also
> > re-installed as a package (pkg_add -r). The results are unchanged.
> >
> > When I start a new document, the cursor is a dot instead of a
> > vericle line. The first character that I type looks fine but all
> > following charaters render on top of each other. With a new screen,
> > if I repeatedly press the space key the cursor moves less than a mm
> > with each press. Opening an existing document is also messed up. All
> > characters are bunched together and unreadable.
> >
> > I am at a loss. I have tried different formats, fonts, sizes and
> > every other thing I can think of without solution.
> >
> > Any help will be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Robert
>
> Hi Robert,
>
> I had the exact same problem on ArchLinux. Nothing fixed it until I
> installed a whole bunch of TTF fonts for another reason. I think it
> happens because of screwed up font metrics in one of the XOrg default
> fonts.
>
> Hope that helps,
>
Hi Kio,

Thanks for responding. Yes, this did help...I guess. I added a couple
of packages using the FreeBSD ports system. I added
X11-font/freefont-ttf and X11-fonts/gnu-unifont-ttf.

I checked the location in my xorg.conf file where Xorg was looking for
fonts. I then added the following to my xorg.conf file:

# added font paths April 27, 2009
        FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/bitstream-vera/
        FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/freefont-ttf/

I found that I could then use the bitstream-vera fonts without any
trouble. I then edited the normal.awt file locater
at /usr/local/share/abiword-2.6/templates/ from Times New Roman to
Bitstream Charter.

Now I can create new documents and when I pull in an existing document
I can "select all" and change it to Bitstream Charter. It definitely is
a bandaid fix.

All of the other files in directories at /usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/ are
gz files. I am not a programmer but I would _guess_ the Xorg upgrade is
not opening those gz files for use by abiword.

Long story short, I am able to use abiword and can live with this.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Robert

P.S. Thanks also to Mark Richardson for his response. I am not sure if
his November thread is the same problem.
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Received on Tue Apr 28 00:07:46 2009