[OT] TTF problem while compiling from source

[Suvayu Ali]

Hi everyone,

I have a weird problem probably very specific to Fedora, hence who 
better to ask but thte list? ;)

I am trying to compile the latest svn trunk of ROOT[1]. It compiles 
without errors and everything seems fine. While using the interactive 
CLI (known as CINT, its an _interpreter_ for C++), one of the GUIs 
segfaults with an error like this:

> Root > Error in <RootX11ErrorHandler>: BadFont (invalid Font parameter) (XID: 54526094, XREQ: 46)

I have reported this to the developers and they haven't been able to 
duplicate this problem on their end (on Scientific Linux 4 & 5). Hence 
they think this might be something very specific to Fedora. On my system 
I have installed everything using yum, so unless there is some 
inconsistency somewhere everything should be fine. I haven't seen any 
other font problems in any of the apps I use. So kinda stumped how to 
troubleshoot this.

This is what one of them had to say about the problem,

> That's really weird. It looks like it is connected with the GUI.
>
> Note that the fact something is installed using yum does not makes it
> safe. I recently had problem with a package called graphviz. The official
> yum version did not work for me. I had to installed it myself. But is the
> case the TTF yum install should be good I guess.
>
(he made the last comment since I had mentioned I have used yum for 
everything)

Now what would be the packages I should be looking at for this? I tried 
`yum search ttf' but that only comes up with fonts. Is there some 
package that controls how fonts behave in general? I have heard of 
fontconfig and something about ROOT not using fontconfig[2] but I don't 
know whether that is relevant here.

This framework is like bread and butter for me, so pointers to where I 
should look to get behind all this will be very helpful. Thank you in 
advance for any suggestions.

[1] http://root.cern.ch/
[2] This was mentioned in a Review request for ROOT. Look at comment #33 
by Nicolas Mailhot in the following bugzilla report.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=451744

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.