RH9-Fedora upgrade problem: Chinese, i18n fonts

[John Li]

> 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
> 

Many thanks!  That bug report resulted in getting everything fixed.

1) Installing the Mozilla update took care of errors 0-6.
2) Then used the solution in your email archived at
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2003-November/msg04215.html:
  rpm -e --nodeps ttfonts-zh_CN
  rm -rf /usr/share/fonts/zh_CN/TrueType
  rpm -Uvh ttfonts-zh_CN-2.13-0.noarch.rpm
Strangely, this rpm does not contain a font file named ZYSong (as
indicated in the error message), but re-installing it did the job.

John