X font server conflicts with UTF-8 encoding?

[AlxMAX]

Hi,

 

I have tried to search on this forum for a similar problem, I have found individual posts mentioning high CPU load when launching applications and having set the UTF-8 encoding, but I haven't found a thread dedicated to it. The problem is quite annoying and basically it consists, as mentioned, in a high CPU load every time I launch an application like xmms, xfig, xfontsel after setting an UTF-8 based locale (like en_US.UTF-8, or en_IE.UTF8 etc).

 

I have noticed the source of this high CPU load is in fact the X font server. Changing the font source in xorg.conf from the X font server (I mean this setting: FontPath "unix/:-1") to explicit font paths (with the setting: FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF" or whatever) does not solve the problem because this time it is the X itself which produces a high CPU load. This problem is not present on Fedora Core 3 (I mentioned this Linux distribution because I consider it the closest to Mandriva).

 

My questions are:

1. Is there a bug in xfs? Or should I recompile the Xorg and xfs to solve the problem?
   
2. What are the files and settings that affect the xfs behaviour to encodings? Or is there a command to rebuild the font data in order to take into account the UTF-8 encoding?
   

I was able to find some workarounds like renaming xfig to xfig.bin and creating a script named xfig which launces xfig.bin with a particular locale and wich makes xfig.bin think it was launched as xfig. But this solution is temporary and it has the disadvantage each time I reinstall a package concerning one of the binaries (xfig, xmms...) I lose the script.

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

[AlxMAX]

I guess this post can't be classified to Terminal Shell Commands, Kernel and Programming. It is rather Configuration related. Given the fact there's no Configuration section in the Advanced Topics forum, I posted it in the Software section of the General Help forum. Anyway, does anyone have a clue to my question concerning the X font server?

Edited June 16, 2005 by AlxMAX

[metal1633]

You may not even need to be running your Font Server. You only need to run it if you want a remote X terminal to be able to use fonts from your system, or if you want to use fonts that your X server doesn't understand. It can be disabled by modifying your start up scripts.

 

Before you do that though, issue the command, as root, "service xfs stop" And see how your apps run without it.