arious x apps (xterm, xfontsel) don't start due to missing fonts

[Shiva Persaud]

Hi folks,

I'm having what appears to be a common problem but not of the solutions I've found on various forums and threads have worked for me.

I noticed this issue after I configured my system to use the en_US.utf8 locale but it's possible that this issue existed before that change. Note that in debugging I've gone back to using having POSIX as my locale and the problem persists.

I noticed then when I did a ctrl-right click xterm windows would close. I
started an xterm from an xterm and ctrl-right clicked on the new xterm and saw the following error message:

<begin>
~(245)$ xterm
Warning: Cannot convert string
"-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct
Warning: Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font
Warning: Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font
Error: Aborting: no font found
<end>

I see the following with trying to launch xfontsel:

<begin>
$ xfontsel
Warning: Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Unable to load any usable fontset
Error: Aborting: no font found
</end>

xclock starts but it prints the following:

<begin>
$ xclock
Warning: Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font
^C
$
</begin>

I've found, and tried, the following suggestions with no luck:

1. Ensured that media-fonts/font-misc-misc is installed.
2. Ensured that the FontPath is set is /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Other details like which versions of various X components I have installed and  "xset q fp" output can be found in a distro bug opened: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=359679. Please note that in Googling around I've found that users on other distros have experienced this issue. I've attached "strace editres" output @ http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=266879.

Any suggestions on how to address this would be much appreciated.

Thanks!