since 9.04 upgrade, fonts all screwy

[David Harmon]

I don't actually know if "xfs" is the culprit, but since I upgraded to 9.04, I can't get my fonts working right -- they show seriously damaged, barely legible for the better fonts. I first tried the artfully hidden "System->Preferences:Fonts.Details,Resolution" control, and that seemed to help at first, but then the moment I ran firefox, everything went back to the damaged form. In fact, almost everything I've tried -- changing fonts, point sizes, Firefox zooms -- has eventually quit working, often when another program is run. The damage seems to be progressive in the screen -- this sentence was OK out to "progressive" but even that is now damages, as are maybe 1-in10 fresh letters. (Speaking of which, sorry for any typos -- I'm not kidding about barely legible.)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: xfs 1:1.0.8-2.1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: xfs
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[Bombay (waynestillman)]

I am experiencing the same thing. After a fresh start, it seems to happen when applications are opened. In addition, if you change the system fonts - they reset to the default.

[David Harmon (dmh-phoenix)]

Yesterday's (April 27, 2009) updates to various font libraries/programs didn't help either.

[David Harmon (dmh-phoenix)]

More info:
  (1) the progressive damage seems to happen when a program refreshes
  (2) I can't believe I didn't notice this before, but for any given program/refresh, the damage is consistent for each letter -- that is, it's the letter images (at some level) that are actually being corrupted! The specific corruptions are *not* the same between programs, however!

[Bombay (waynestillman)]

More info:
  For many applications the damaged letters in toolbars/buttons repair themselves when the mouse cursor is rolled over them. The applications noted include Dolphin, Kmail and Kate. Kate user entered content does not seem to repair/update upon mouse over.

[Bombay (waynestillman)]

And for non-KDE programs such as Eclipse - mouse over repairs some "button/menu" text items, but not user content text.

[Bombay (waynestillman)]

More info:
    I was editing in Kate and the text was looking good. I saved the file. When the "saving plasmoid monitor" came up - the Kate text was corrupted. I "repaired" the bad text by reloading the file in Kate.

[Bombay (waynestillman)]

Everything is working now. I installed some fontsand uninstalled others. Some applications like the system digital clock needed to have its fonts set, but that did it. It seems the version update script did not handle the font packages well.

[Bombay (waynestillman)]

Everything is working now. I installed some fonts and uninstalled others. Some applications like the system digital clock needed to have its fonts set, but that did it. It seems the version update script did not handle the font packages well.

[David Harmon (dmh-phoenix)]

After discovering that the LiveCD boot and installer were *also*
affected by this,
I've given up and rolled back to 8.10. (Interestingly, the big didn't
show on an even older machine, with a much weaker graphics card (640x480).

[Bombay (waynestillman)]

I rolled back to 8.03. However, I have a ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] which has a verified bug that acts like this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/373968

[David Harmon (dmh-phoenix)]

Bombay: Aha! That report sounds much more apropos ... perhaps this bug should be folded into that one. I'm using a Radeon 1300X