RH9-Fedora upgrade problem: Chinese, i18n fonts

[Robert D. Arendt]

John Li wrote:
>>Please help!
>>  I have just upgraded from RH9 to Fedora.  However,
>>I have a problem using Simplified Chinese (Traditional
>>Chinese works fine).  When at the login prompt I
>>choose languages, the script next to the simplified
>>Chinese option does not display Chinese, but little
>>squares of hex code.  (Thai is the same way.) When I 
>>choose simplified Chinese and log in, Linux will not 
>>load, and the following message pops up:
>>  Your session only lasted 10 seconds....this could
>>  mean there is some installation problem....
>>[ellipses represent text deleted by me]
>>
>>The option is presented to view file ~/.xsession-errors,
>>which contains:
>>
>>0mXftFontOpen(): Failed:  
>>(and then, in Chinese: "file or directory doesn't exist")
>>Following charsets:
>>0: -Sony-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--16-120-100-100-c-80-ISO8859-1
>>1: -Sony-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--16-120-100-100-c-80-ISO8859-1
>>2: -isas-fangsong ti-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-gb2312.1980-0
>>3: -jis-fixed-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-jisx0208.1983-0
>>4: -baekmuk-batangbdf-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-ksc5601.1987-0
>>5: -taipei-fixed-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-c-0-big5-0
>>6: -arabic-newspaper-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso10646-1
>>....
>>** (gnome-session:5681): WARNING **: Cannot open font file for font
>>ZYSong 18030 10
>>** (gnome-session:5681): WARNING **: Cannot open fallback 
>>font, nothing
>>to do
>>
>>What can I do to fix this problem?
>>
>>By the way, no such problem existed in my RH9 installation.  I'm aware
>>that RH9 used zh_CN.gb18030, while Fedora uses zh_CN.UTF-8, I think.
>>  Thanks very much!
>>
> Additional information that I should have
> mentioned:  I have added all updates available
> via up2date (except Mozilla-related, due to 
> some bug) as of 1/1/04.  I did not test whether
> simplified Chinese worked before adding the
> updates.
> 
> John

This bug might be related:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=109537

Although marked as "closed", the underlying problem still remains.
Mozilla was fixed to discard bad font info, coasting through the
problem (but not displaying the font!).

Several font packages won't update properly from RH9 -> FC1, and
the bad font info can result in app crashes.  I noticed it in mozilla,
though the problem isn't restricted to this app.

Several remedies to the font problem are described in the bug comments.

Hope this helps,
-Bob Arendt