After 12.3 upgrade, some apps do not show text, only boxes

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#1

openSUSE v12.3
gnome v3.6.2

After the upgrade from 12.2 to 12.3, some applications (Maginfier, Acrobat Reader) do not display text anymore. What shows are vertical rectangular boxes where the text would otherwise be.

Usually such behavior indicates the inability of the font system to translate a character set. But since the same apps were fine in 12.2, I suspect there is something else happening.

Any ideas how to fix this?

I expect this should provide a clue:

$ acroread &
[1] 3118

$ Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "atk-bridge"
(acroread:3118): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "oxygen-gtk",
(acroread:3118): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "adwaita",
(acroread:3118): Pango-CRITICAL **: No modules found:
No builtin or dynamically loaded modules were found.
PangoFc will not work correctly.
This probably means there was an error in the creation of:
  '/etc/pango/pango.modules'
You should create this file by running:
  pango-querymodules > '/etc/pango/pango.modules'
(acroread:3118): Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font, expect ugly output. engine-type='PangoRenderFc', script='common'
(acroread:3118): Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font, expect ugly output. engine-type='PangoRenderFc', script='latin'

Hmm. Yes. </etc/pango/> is an empty directory.

#2

Gentoo forums recommend installing

pango-tools-32bit - Library for Layout and Rendering of Text – Tools

Gentoo Forums :: View topic - Pango problem, 32/64bit (solved)

#3

Known bug:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=792646

You can fix this by reinstalling the package libpango1-1_0-0-32bit

Or run the following in a terminal as root:

pango-querymodules --update-cache

Or wait for the online update…:wink:

#4

Well, that was a disaster. I’m sure I selected the incorrect options. To re-install I thought to remove libpango1-1_0-0-32bit, then install it again. It removed a whole load of stuff, added 2.5 GB more of other. And when it was finished, the system could not load the login screen. Splat!

I (re-) updated to 12.3. This time, after 3 hours of installation and updates, the boxes are gone and text is displayed as I would expect. Sheesh. All the stuff that was added from above was, fortunately, removed.

Or run the following in a terminal as root:

pango-querymodules --update-cache

That made no difference which is why I tried the remove/add scenario.

Or wait for the online update…:wink:

That would have been smarter.

#5

Sorry to hear that… Looks like half of your system got switched to 32bit to satisfy dependencies.

You should have right-clicked on the package in yast and selected “Update unconditionally”.

But I don’t know why pango-querymodules hasn’t worked for you. Did fine here…