Xwin remote calls to Solaris machines/ font server bug

[Dr.D.J.Picton]

I have two observations to make concerning the use of 'XWin -query' to
Solaris machines.

1.  Firstly, the FAQ states that Solaris can't cope with 24-bit colour
depths.  This may have been true for older releases, but all recent versions
of Solaris (and recent Sun hardware) support this depth!

2.  The FAQ refers to the 'hang' when you attempt to contact a remote Solaris
host using XWin -query e.g.

Xwin -query sunhost

The cure is to specify a Solaris font server on the command line, e.g.

XWin -query sunhost -fp tcp/sunhost:7100

However, this shouldn't be necessary for recent Solaris releases.  The XSetup
script on the Sun machine automatically adds the font server to the font
path, before the dtlogin window appears.

The real reason for the problem is a bug in XWin, which 'hangs' if I
try to mix local fonts with a Solaris font server.

The following procedures work OK:

1.  Start up an XWin server with normal local fonts, then replace them with
a Solaris font server:
xset fp= tcp/sunhost:7100

2.  Start up an Xwin server with -fp tcp/sunhost:7100 on the command line.

3.  Add a second Solaris font server when the fontpath already contains one.

The following procedures cause a 'hang':

1.  Start up an XWin server with normal local fonts, then append a Solaris
font server:

xset fp+ tcp/sunhost:7100

2.  Start up an XWin server with -fp tcp/sunhost:7100 on the command line,
then try to append a local font to the path:

xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc