[Pan-users] new pango-1.17.0 glitches - fun fun fun :)

[SciFi]

Oh boy what fun after upgrading to the new pango-1.17.0.

>>>>
$ pan

(pan:22954): Pango-WARNING **: No builtin or dynamically
loaded modules were found. Pango will not work correctly.
This probably means there was an error in the creation of:
  '/usr/local/etc/pango/pango.modules'
You should create this file by running pango-querymodules.

(pan:22954): Pango-WARNING **: pango_shape called with bad font, expect ugly 
output

(pan:22954): Pango-WARNING **: pango_font_get_glyph_extents called with null 
font argument, expect ugly output

(pan:22954): Pango-WARNING **: pango_font_get_metrics called with null font 
argument, expect ugly output

(pan:22954): Pango-WARNING **: _pango_cairo_font_install called with bad font, 
expect ugly output
<<<<

And pan2 prints everything with a box i.e. bad characters in fonts
all over the place including drop-down menus etc.

All the tests in "make check" for pango-1.17.0 went fine.

I followed my usual recipe for building the chain of components in
this order:

atk-1.19.1 (originally upgraded 2 weeks ago)
cairo-1.4.6 (" " 2 weeks ago)
pango-1.17.0 (brand new)
esound-0.2.38 (originally upgraded last week)
glib-2.13.1 (" " last week)
gmime-2.2.8 (" " last week)
gtk+-2.10.12 (" " last week)
pan_svn/pan2 r290

After building & installing pango-1.17.0, I went back into each
component again to see if the make process detected anything
needing remaking again.  In other words I was quite thorough to be
sure everything matches with each other since pango was the only
thing changed and it's rather deep in the stack.  Yes there was
quite a lot to rebuild in this manner. 
(Using GNU make-3.81.90+cvs they are trying to be sure the
dependencies are scanned thoroughly.  But now "too much" is
triggering a remake for any little reason.  So they have a Google
Summer of Code project going that should help determine better
ways of checking when things change.)

Even went back to pango-1.16.4 and remade everything afterwards. 
Still had the above problem.

Finally after hours of this, I figured out how to run
pango-querymodules properly here:

# cd /usr/local/etc/pango
# pango-querymodules /usr/local/lib/pango/1.6.0/modules/*.so >pango.modules

Yeah darwin/osx wants .dylib suffix but .so had been working for
pango & gtk loaders for months here, so I don't think it needs
fixing in that regard (eventually maybe they should be using
.dylib...).

I don't know why I stumbled into this situation all-of-a-sudden-
-like, apparently all of the previous pango releases didn't
install a full pango.modules file here either (I only saw a dummy
commented one installed), but pango had been working until 1.17.0
hit.  The Changelog did mention they altered how pango.modules is
created at make-install time so it'd work for cross-builds, but
now it doesn't seem to be reliably created even for same-system
builds.  ;)

It's working now, but we're seeing some new oddities now, too. 
I'll need to file screen-grabs in bugzilla so we can keep track of
what's going on.  Just to wet your whistle, one glitch can now be
seen on the Post Article From choice list:
"name" <address@hidden> * Comment etc.
.                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
.                      this is in back-slanted italics!
I mean the letters are slanted in this direction: \\\\\
Normal italics are in this direction: ////
I think this is due to the new pango-atsui's attempt at
synthesising italics for fonts that don't have any explicitly
designed in.  This is briefly mentioned in the ChangeLog for
pango-1.17.0.

I'm sure I've distclean'd things to the point that all this should
be very fresh and matching properly.  But 1.17.0 _is_ marked as
unstable, so I'm going to assume hopefully these new bugs can be
recreated by other ppl and eventually squashed.  I wanted to get
up on 1.17.0 for the ATSUI fixes, and they are also concentrating
on OpenType now.

I'll say it again:  Ain't it *fun* to be on the bleeding edge like
this?  :)

Thanks for reading.  Hope it's warning enough for anyone out
there.