Sunday, June 14, 2009

Mathematica: xset: bad font path element (#23)

I have Mathematica 7.0 installed on a Linux server with CentOS 5.2. I'm using my PC (now Arch Linux) to x forwad (ssh -Y login@server) mathematica from the server to my PC. Unfortunately I was getting error xset: bad font path element (#23), possible causes are:
Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
Directory missing fonts.dir
Incorrect font server address or syntax
After 20-30 seconds I was getting the following window:
This is a common problem and the solution is here. For clarity I write what I did:
  1. From Mathematica's CD I unpacked /Unix/Files/Fonts/contents.tar.gz into my home directory in my Arch Linux PC. After unpacking the font path was: /home/W/SystemFiles/Fonts/Type1
  2. I added this path to my font path: xset fp+ /home/W/SystemFiles/Fonts/Type1; xset fp rehash
  3. I chacked if the new path was included: xset q
  4. I logged into the serwer using ssh -Y login@server and started mathematica and it worked!