[R] Vanishing Font Path

[Patrick Connolly]

platform       i686-pc-linux-gnu           
arch           i686                        
os             linux-gnu                   
system         i686, linux-gnu             
status                                     
major          2                           
minor          6.0                         
year           2007                        
month          10                          
day            03                          
svn rev        43063                       
language       R                           
version.string R version 2.6.0 (2007-10-03)

Linux version: RHEL3
 
This worked happily for quite some time but suddenly, I received 
this message:

> x11()
Error in x11() : 
  could not find any X11 fonts
Check that the Font Path is correct.

I can't think of what could have happened to have changed anything.  
So I tried this:

$ /usr/sbin/chkfontpath -l
Current directories in font path:
1: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled
2: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled
3: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled
4: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc
5: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1
6: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo
7: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic
8: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF
9: /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1
10:

I don't know what one would normally expect to see there, so I don't
know 
if that's strange or not.  The space after the 10: looks suspicious I
must 
admit but it might be as it should.

I notice in the archives that some people had a problem getting the font

path set in the first place, but that can't be the case here.

Someone had a problem with Gentoo but doesn't seem to have any
responses.  
Either that or the threading not working at
http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02a/archive/71651.html makes it 
tricky to find one.  In any case that one doesn't appear to have worked 
previously anyway.

The only thing I can think of which might have made a difference is my 
addition to my .Rprofile to change the default device.  However, 
removing that change did not fix the problem.

Nothing else has a problem (including the pdf plotting device), so it's 
not exactly a disaster, but I'd like to know how it could have arisen.

TIA

Patrick Connolly