Font viewer not showing fonts

[anmys]

I am running debian testing with mate 1.16 version. When I use mate-font-viewer to check out a font file, it just displays a blank, black area. No error messages are printed on the terminal. If it matters, there is no problem with the font file as I can use it in all other programs.

I also tried by clearing off all the $HOME/.* files and restarting the programs. Same result Even changing the desktop/window manager does not help.

Any pointers to solve the problem will be helpful.

[GarryRicketson]

What terminal are you using ?, I mean like xterm, eterm,xfce terminal, mate,..(you say mate,but that does not mean the mate terminal,...)
A long time ago, on older Debian version, I thought the gnome, and also the
mate terminals did not work, all I could see is a black screen , no curser, etc,..
I got looking at the configuration,...
Looked at "edit">preferences> colours , and what I found was that it was
using a default , black background, black text, and black cursor.
So that was pretty obvious, once I changed it to a white back ground ,black text and black cursor ,.. the terminal was working, it was just I couldn't see anything because it was all black.
I don't know if the "mate-font" viewer, and on the newer Debian versions has the same options for setting colours,background ,etc, but it might be worth looking into.

[anmys]

There seems to be some misunderstanding of my problem. I am not talking about the terminal, but the mate-font-viewer window. In case it matters, I am using terminator.

[GarryRicketson]

Ok, well I do understand that, but any way, , can you explain exactly how you
are starting "mate-font-viewer" ?

No error messages are printed on the terminal.

Is what made me think you are trying to run it from the terminal,...
In any event, since I do have "mate" , I tried it, and can not seem to duplicate
the problem, however mine is the old stable Debian, (Wheezy),...
I did have a little problem starting it from the terminal, so I looked
at :

Code: Select all

 man mate-font-viewer

Based on what it said , I started it using the command:

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mate-control-center

Then from there, "Appearance", > Fonts
I had no problem viewing all the available fonts,....of course, since Debian testing, no longer works the same as the older versions,
and

I am running debian testing with mate 1.16 version.

Mine is mate 1.8,.... so nothing is the same, sorry,... maybe later if I have a chance I will look at the newer version that is on a VM, and see if it has this problem.

[debiman]

i can offer a workaround, if not a solution.
save this script to $HOME/bin/fontview:

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#!/bin/sh

fg="#123"
bg="#fed"

convert -background "$bg" -fill "$fg" -density \
"$(xdpyinfo | sed -n 's/resolution:\(.*\)dots per inch/\1/p')" \
"$@" PNG:- | feh -^ "$@" -N -

then make it the default application to open font files.
you need imagemagick and feh (though the latter can be replaced with another imageviewer).

of course it would be nicer to solve this from within mate.

[anmys]

Ok, well I do understand that, but any way, , can you explain exactly how you
are starting "mate-font-viewer" ?

I tried including a screenshot, but could not as the server kept giving a message about quota for the day being exceeded. I am inclding a link to the image on flickr here. Hopefully, it explains the problem I am facing.

https://flic.kr/p/RhV8av

[stevepusser]

Could it have something to do with the GTK 3 theme you are using? Arc has good support for the newer GTK 3, try installing arc-theme and switching to that to test it.

[anmys]

Could it have something to do with the GTK 3 theme you are using? Arc has good support for the newer GTK 3, try installing arc-theme and switching to that to test it.

I use Openbox. Would gtk3 theme matter under that?

[stevepusser]

Mate uses GTK, but I'm unsure whether the font viewer is using GTK 2 or 3. I think mate-1.16 in Debian is a mixture, and mate-2.0 aims to be fully GTK 3.

[anmys]

Mate uses GTK, but I'm unsure whether the font viewer is using GTK 2 or 3. I think mate-1.16 in Debian is a mixture, and mate-2.0 aims to be fully GTK 3.

I tried this:

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$ ldd `which mate-font-viewer` | grep gtk
	libgtk-3.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0 (0x00007ffb449f7000)
	libcanberra-gtk3.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcanberra-gtk3.so.0 (0x00007ffb420c2000)

Am I correct in assuming that it is using gtk3?

[debiman]

Am I correct in assuming that it is using gtk3?

yes.

[stevepusser]

Do you have the MATE settings manager installed? If so, check to see what theme (style) you have set in there and see if installing the arc theme and using it makes any difference.

If that doesn't help, my next guess would be that something in openbox needs to be configured, but I'm lost after that.