Re: [STUMP] the value nil is not of type stumpwm:screen

[Shawn Betts]

> 16: (XLIB::QUERY-FONT #<XLIB:FONT 9x15bold :0 6291462>)
> 17: (XLIB:OPEN-FONT
>      #<XLIB:DISPLAY :0 (The X.Org Foundation R10503000)>
>      "9x15bold")

Looks like it's trying to open the default font except that it doesn't
exist. I've seen this once before and haven't figured out a solution
yet. The problem is stumpwm uses the function xlib:list-font-names to
see if a font exists. That function says it does but when stumpwm
tries to open the font with xlib:open-font it turns out it doesn't
exist and throws an error. Because stumpwm isn't ready to display
error messages at that point because it hasn't loaded a font another
error about that is produced causing the "nil is not of type screen"
error.

The solution is to edit primitives.lisp and change this line:

(defparameter +default-font-name+ "9x15bold")

to

(defparameter +default-font-name+ "*")

The "*" font is guaranteed to load so long as you have at least one
font installed on your system (at least afaik). From there you can
boot stumpwm and start trying different fonts until you get one that
works.

If anyone can figure out a different way to detect if a font exists or
find out what's wrong with list-font-names or my understanding of it,
I'd love to hear it.

On that note, Brian, can you try reproducing this on clisp?

-Shawn