(Linux) wine font problem: boxes, lines, etc...

[^rooker]

[PROBLEM]
Suddenly, wine didn't display meaningful characters anymore - just boxes, lines and other rubbish.

[SOLUTION]
Remove the current font-folder, restore a default (e.g. sserife.fon), and then add the other fonts back:

Code: Select all

mv ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/xxx_fonts
mkdir ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts

# just open and close winecfg to reset default font:
winecfg

cp /usr/share/wine/fonts/sserife.fon ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts

# again: open and close:
winecfg

mv ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/xxx_fonts/* ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts
rmdir ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/xxx_fonts

[DETAILS]
Thanks to this article on ubuntuforums.org, it was clear that this was caused by an application installing "the first new font" on my wine.

Initially, the "~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts/" folder is empty. so wine defaults to sans-serife font. As soon as you drop a font for the first time into that folder, wine assumes to use it as default font.