xsessions-errors related to Xft

[Bremm]

Binary package hint: xfce4

Copied from here:

http://extats.blogspot.com/2010/03/annoying-error-message-from-startxfce4.html

Whilst trying to understand errors and warnings in logs from my brand new Xubuntu 10.04, I came accross some annoying error messages on my .xsession-error file:
<stdin>:1:3: error: invalid preprocessing directive #Those
<stdin>:2:3: error: invalid preprocessing directive #or
<stdin>:3:3: error: invalid preprocessing directive #Xft
<stdin>:4:3: error: invalid preprocessing directive #Xft
xrdb: "Xft.hinting" on line 9 overrides entry on line 6
xrdb: "Xft.hintstyle" on line 11 overrides entry on line 7
Not critical, it seems, not serious, just annoying. I guessed that xrdb was the culprit and searched for its configuration files:

carlos@molotov:~$ locate xrdb | egrep etc
/etc/xdg/xfce4/Xft.xrdb

There I had lines starting with "# Those", etc. A look at the man page for xrdb indicated that the Xft.xrdb file is passes through the C preprocessor, (whose directives are preceded by #). It clearly states that comments should be preceded by!rather than #.

So edit the conf file, replace '#' by '!' and the annoyance is gone!

The procedure above is to get rid of <stdin> errors. And, to clean up the "xrdb" lines, search for "Xft.xrdb" under $HOME and delete these files. For example:

$ rm /home/bremm/.config/xfce4/Xft.xrdb

Explanation is here (but ignore the 1st part where someone tells to delete lines in /etc/xdg/xfce4/Xft.xrdb):

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=87404

Another file: /home/some-user/.config/xfce4/Xft.xrdb
can be deleted and this removes 2 more errors.
But than anyway these "errors" are harmless as far is i can see and do not explain the problem at the begin of this thread.

Many thanks to the original posters.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Mar 26 16:12:54 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: xfce4 4.6.1.3
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=pt_BR:pt:pt_PT
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-17.26-generic 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
SourcePackage: xfce4
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-17-generic x86_64