Some time ago, I posted a query about problems displaying certain
fonts on Netscape with Solaris 2.6 which worked fine before
upgrading to 2.6 from 2.5.
With no replies from the list (with the exception of one other lucky
person with the same problem - "David L. Markowitz"
<David.Markowitz@litronic.com>) we were relying on Sun coming up with
a bug fix.
The basic problem appears to be that the Adobe-Times 12-point font
doesn't always display correctly on Netscape 3.xx and 4.xx . The
result is that the text appears to be there, but the ink is set to the
same colour as the background, so it is invisible - links appear as
just a line where the underlining should be.
This problem is not hardware specific - AFAIK it has cropped up on
several Solaris 2.6 architectures - a TGX+ frame buffer, a Creator FB,
and a GX (cgsix) frame buffer, with machines ranging from an Ultra 2
to a Sparc Classic.
Work arounds from Sun:
1) Force a preload of the adobe times font before launching netscape:
xfd -fn \-adobe-times-roman-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
2) remove the type 1 fonts from the font path:
xset -fp /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/
3) set your Netscape preferences to use a different font - eg use the
Linotype Times 12 point font instead.
You must then restart the X-server.
Note *ANY* other font will work okay it seems.
4) moving the Type 1 fonts towards the end of your font path may help
xset fp=/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/F3/,/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/F3bitmaps/,/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/,/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/misc,/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/,/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/
xset fp rehash
(it's important to do the rehash, because otherwise the X system
won't read the new font path)
************
Sun appear to be putting these problems down to a bug in netscape
itself, but I think there is something more fundamental going wrong in
the X server. Sun seem to think that this problem only occurs with
NN4.x, but we're using NN3.0 here, and it worked fine, and still does
work fine on all the Solaris 2.5 boxes (and some of the Solaris 2.6
boxes), but it doesn't work correctly on certain 2.6 machines.
Looks like we're forced to just use a work around at the moment.
FYI:
Sun BugID: 4060341
Sun reported it to Netscape, and it's also Netscape BugID: 92843
Matt Reynolds
- --
# Matthew Reynolds, | Email: reynolmd@aston.ac.uk #
# Aston Space Geodesy | Web: www.aston.ac.uk/~reynolmd #
# Aston University, Birmingham, | Phone: (+44) 121-359-3611 x4552 #
# B4 7ET. England, Earth. | Fax: (+44) 121-333-3389 #
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