Strange problem: some remote xterms would not startup

[Thomas Dickey]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 11:42:35AM -0400, Mikhail T. wrote:
> On 20.08.2012 18:43, Thomas Dickey wrote:
>> Solaris 8's xterm would likely be the X11R6 version, while Solaris 10
>> might/might not be the one that I maintain.  If
>>
>> 	xterm -v
>>
>> prints a version number, my curiosity about that would be satisfied.
> On both systems `xterm -v' simply attempts to start -- succeeding on 8 
> and failing on 10 as reported, but not reporting version on either.
>
> Running ident on both shows the exact same version-string:
>
>    $XConsortium: main.c /main/231 1995/09/13 10:47:00 kaleb $
>
> I am guessing, whatever changes happened to xterm since then, they did 
> not affect main.c :-)
>
> If there is any other tell-tale sign (strings `which xterm` | grep /foo/ 
> ?), let me know...
>
> But my question remains: what could be lacking in my X-server, that (some 
> versions of) xterm require to run? Thanks! Yours,

I can guess - the related code is basically trying to load the font given
in your "font" resource, and making some simple checks on it.  If that
fails, it tries to load the "fixed" font (which should be present, but
xorg-hackers keep chipping away at compatibility...).   Likely the change
is one of Sun's patches, modifying the "simple checks" on the font, e.g.,
to exclude TrueType fonts better (though the X11R6 version I just looked
at should be doing _that_ well enough).

(Sun made changes to xterm along with other X code - which were at times
quite noticeable due to breaking their version of xterm 2-3 times, but
never made their changes publicly available - can't read _that_ source
code to answer the question).

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <dickey at invisible-island.net>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net
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