xblast-tnt package requires xfonts-75dpi package or some font package providing helvetica font

[peanut butter]

Description: Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS
Release: 12.04
xblast-tnt:
  Installed: 2.10.4-3
  Candidate: 2.10.4-3
  Version table:
 *** 2.10.4-3 0
        500 http://mirrors.us.kernel.org/ubuntu/ precise/universe i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

After installing xblast-tnt, I expected it to start and run without problem.

Instead, the xblast window would appear very briefly and then output this to the terminal after disappearing:

<...snip...>
could not load font -*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
could not load font -*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
could not load font -*-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*
X Error of failed request: BadFont (invalid Font parameter)
  Major opcode of failed request: 56 (X_ChangeGC)
  Resource id in failed request: 0x0
  Serial number of failed request: 510
  Current serial number in output stream: 540

Installing xfonts-75dpi and restarting X solved it. Looks like this and other font packages that provided the required helvetica font should be a package dependency. This would still require a restart of X, however.

Alternately, the package could use a reqularly available system font instead and thus avoid the font package dependency and X restart.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel (1-daniel-1)]

This is bug is still a problem in (K)ubuntu 17.10, solution in description verified to work.