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New Installation, Fontconfig warnings/errors, PDF works

silverRocket
Hi there

I'm moving to a new server, from RedHatES3 to RedHatES5 and I've re-installed Prince as well as a custom "fonts.css" file to point Prince to the real location of some fonts.

When I try to run a test conversion at the command line, a PDF is produced, but the command line always reports:

Fontconfig warning: line 32: unknown element "cachedir"
Fontconfig warning: line 33: unknown element "cachedir"
Fontconfig error: "conf.d", line 1: no element found

I use Prince with PHP, but I do have my conversion scripts check for any warnings generated and my 'workflow' is stopped if any warnings exist... so I'd like to eliminate this.

I'm relatively new to linux, but surviving. Fontconfig is installed and I think the cache is built, as I ran "fc-cache" but still have this error.

Tips appreciated!
mikeday
This error is caused by some changes in the Fontconfig configuration file format that the library used by Prince doesn't understand. It does not affect the operation of Prince, but the constant warning messages are a bit annoying.

Are you running the ES3 or ES4 RPM? If the Fontconfig version has changed between ES4 and ES5, then it might be easiest if we build a new Prince RPM for ES5.
silverRocket
We're running the ES4 RPM. I was actually wondering if that was the deal. Would I have any more luck with the generic linux build? Or asked another way, when do you think you could have an ES5 package? :) Thanks!
mikeday
It might be worth trying the generic Linux build, as it is probably using a more up to date version of the Fontconfig library. We will build a new RPM package for ES5 once we have a server environment setup with vmware, perhaps after the next maintenance release.
silverRocket
I tried the generic Linux build, but still have a fontconfig issue (a little different):

Fontconfig warning: line 30: unknown element "cachedir"
Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/80-delicious.conf", line 18: invalid match target "scan"

I'll have to adjust my PHP script to allow errors that contain "conf" or "cachedir" i suppose... hope to see an ES5 build soon :)
kmmv
Oddly enough, I'm getting this on my FreeBSD workstation now, too, using the static Linux binary on FreeBSD 6.2 (through emulation).

fontconfig-2.4.2_2,1                =   up-to-date with port
freetype2-2.2.1_2                   =   up-to-date with port
mikeday
We will try to fix both of these issues by including support for Red Hat ES5 and FreeBSD 6.x in the next maintenance release.
Nakio
mikeday wrote:
We will try to fix both of these issues by including support for Red Hat ES5 and FreeBSD 6.x in the next maintenance release.


Just for information, I also get:

Fontconfig warning: line 32: unknown element "cachedir"
Fontconfig warning: line 33: unknown element "cachedir"
Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/80-delicious.conf", line 18: invalid match target "scan"


... from prince-6.0r4-linux, on Gentoo Linux, with fontconfig-2.4.2.
mikeday
We will build the next maintenance release of Prince with fontconfig-2.4.2, which should solve this issue, at least until they change the config format again. :)
dynnamitt
When is this release scheduled?

(I am having the same problem in the new Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon)

Kind regards.
mikeday
Before the end of the year, hopefully before the end of November.
jean
Confirmed with Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) as well:

Fontconfig warning: line 32: unknown element "cachedir"
Fontconfig warning: line 33: unknown element "cachedir"
Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/80-delicious.conf", line 18: invalid match target "scan"


$ prince --version
Prince 6.0 rev 4 [...]
Professional License
mikeday
It took a bit longer than we hoped, but the new maintenance release is out today. We don't yet have an RPM specifically for Red Hat 5, but the Linux package uses a more recent fontconfig version that should remove those warning messages. (You could also try the SUSE RPMs).
gb1
Fantastic, I am just doing some tests on RHEL 5 and was having this problem. I'll check out the new build.
mikeday
Prince 6.0 rev 6, released today, now includes a package for FreeBSD 6.3.
Chris Thorman
With latest r6 release, we are now having fontconfig issues on. On each render, we get:

[Mon May 12 10:05:25 2008] [error] [client 10.0.33.197] Fontconfig warning: no <cachedir> elements found. Check configuration.
[Mon May 12 10:05:25 2008] [error] [client 10.0.33.197] Fontconfig warning: adding <cachedir>/var/cache/fontconfig</cachedir>
[Mon May 12 10:05:25 2008] [error] [client 10.0.33.197] Fontconfig warning: adding <cachedir>~/.fontconfig</cachedir>
[Mon May 12 10:05:25 2008] [error] [client 10.0.33.197] Fontconfig error: out of memory

(And the rendering seems to be about 25x slower than it was...)

We are using the static linux build: prince-6.0r6-linux.tar.gz -- because we prefer a non-root installation.

Would it make a difference if we switched to the prince-6.0r6-1.rhel4.i386.rpm build instead?

Should we be updating our fontconfig version of fontconfig? We are at 2.4.1.

-c
mikeday
If you are using RHEL4 then I would recommend using the appropriate RPM package. Is there an option to rpm that allows you to install it elsewhere in a directory of your choice? If not, how about extracting the files from the package and putting them somewhere else instead of installing the RPM?
mikeday
Today we have released a CentOS 5.2 RPM package for Prince 6.0 rev 8, available from the download page. This package should also work on Red Hat ES5.