Unable to load any usable iso8859 font

[Jon TURNEY]

Dan Moulding wrote:
> This time, I was getting "Unable to load any usable iso8859 font"
> errors anytime I'd try to start xterm. I searched the FAQs and the
> web, but was unable to find any suggestions that led to a solution. At
> one point, while trying to fix the problem, I also got the "could not
> open default font 'fixed'" error, but none of the solutions listed in
> the FAQ were applicable (either the problem described was obviously
> not a match, or the solution, like re-installing all fonts, had
> already been tried).

This is really strange.  "Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font" comes from 
Xt, when it has failed to load the requested font, it tries a fallback of 
"-*-*-*-R-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-ISO8859-*", which should always match the built-in 
font "-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1" (aka 
fixed, which the server should refuse to start if it can't find)

> As a last resort, I used the Cygwin setup log to figure out which
> packages had been updated, and rolled them all back to the versions I
> was previously using. Now my X applications are working fine again, so
> something in one of the updated packages definitely triggered this
> problem.

xorg-server-1.5.3-5 made a change to the way the built-in font-path element is 
made available, I suspect this is somehow causing problems.

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