Re: installing Mathematica 3.0 on SUN/HP workstations
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg9453] Re: installing Mathematica 3.0 on SUN/HP workstations
- From: "P.J. Hinton" <paulh>
- Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 02:40:01 -0500
- Organization: Wolfram Research, Inc.
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Dominique Schreurs wrote: > We have a problem concerning the fonts when installing the Mathematica > 3.0 version on a SUN-workstation and on HP-UNIX workstations. The > SUN-workstation serves as the license server, also towards the HP-UNIX > workstations. > For that, it is necessary that some paths should be added to the font > server. > However the command 'xset' is unknown on the Sun 4.1.4 Workstation, and > on the HP workstation, this command results in the following error: > > xset: bad font path element (#42), possible causes are: > Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions > Directory missing fonts.dir > Incorrect font server address or syntax > > The solutions proposed in the FAQ on the Wolfram homepage didn't seem to > work in our case. > We would appreciate it very much if someone can propose other solutions. The fact that Mathematica requires five families of special fonts causes problems for users of Mathematica on Unix systems. However, diagnosing the source of a particular problems requires more detailed information: 1) On what machine is the X front end running? On what machine's X server is the front end being displayed? Are they the same machine or different? If the machines are the same, then the front end startup scripts should set the font paths properly. If they are not the same, the user must add the Mathematica font directories manually to the X server's font path using xset. The xset command must be executed in a shell on the X server machine, not the remote machine where Mathematica is running. 2) What windowing environment are you using? There are some issues on both HP and Sun workstations that can give rise to error messages like the above, even when you heed the instructions in (1). Sun workstation issues If your machine is running SunOS 4.1.x, and you are using OpenWindows instead of X11, you have a font compatibility problem. The version of OpenWindows that you are using requires special NeWS format fonts that did not appear on the original Mathematica 3.0 CD-ROMs. You can get these fonts from Technical Support following the instructions at URL: http://www.wolfram.com/support/Systems/Unix/FE/FontFix.html The instructions for obtaining and installing the NeWS fonts are near the bottom of this page. HP workstation issues Of the supported Unix workstations, HP is the only vendor whose X server does not support the ability to scale outline (Type 1) fonts directly. If you attempt to add a directory of Type 1 fonts to the X server's font path, you will get an error message about a bad font path element. You can set up an X font server (a process that runs on a host somewhere on your network) so that it scales the Type 1 fonts for the HP X server. The setup of a font server is not supported officially by Wolfram Research Technical support because the setup can vary according to vendor. However, a sysadmin for some HP workstations who solved this problem for his system reports that all of the necessary information can be found in HP's documentation. Refer to their "Using the X Window System" Manual in the "Using the X11R5 Font Server" of Chapter 6, "Using Fonts." -- P.J. Hinton Mathematica Programming Group paulh at wolfram.com Wolfram Research, Inc. http://www.wolfram.com/~paulh/