Inkscape

Inkscape doesn't start up - Mac OS 10.4.11

Asked by E

I'm currently running Mac OS 10.4.11 and Inkscape 0.46, and have been using it happily for several versions on Mac OS, until today, when it won't start up. I click on the Inkscape icon as usual, X11 boots up, then a bit of disk accessing, and that's it. No window, menu or error message appears, though it shows as running in the dock. I've left it running for over an hour in case it was building the font library, tried booting X11 first, and uninstalled and reinstalled Inkscape. I can't think of anything I've changed since last week when it was fine, other than sorting out my fonts in Font Book.

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su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#1

Did you by chance add any new fonts?

Not all font formats are recognized or handled well by the pango, the library within inkscape that does the font handling - '.dfont', '.fon' or other bitmap fonts for example can cause problems. Furthermore Inkscape has it's own font management - deleting unwanted or corrupted fonts within the Font Book has no effect on Inkscape - you need to remove the font files from '/System/Library/fonts' or '/Library/Fonts' yourself (in the finder).

You can force the rebuilding of Inkscapes font cache - but I'd first have to search how to do that myself (never having used Inkscape 0.46 on Tiger). On Leopard, the font cache is rebuilt automatically if there are new or missing fonts in the OS X font folders. Maybe try first to move any unwanted / suspect fonts out of the default font folders (e.g. to the desktop if you want to keep them), then restart both X11 and Inkscape.

hth, ~suv

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su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#2

oops - make that 'Did you by chance add/remove/disable any fonts (rather than just manage collections)?'

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E (pickanynumber) said : 		#3

Thanks for replying so quickly, and sorry to be slow getting back to you. Yes I did remove some corrupted fonts, and also add a few new ones in Font book , so I'll try what you've suggested and get back to you.

Thanks

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E (pickanynumber) said : 		#4

Ok it's definitely a font problem. If I dump all the fonts from '/Library/Fonts' into a folder on the desktop, Inkscape starts. I've narrowed it down to being a .TTF causing the problem, but that still leaves me with 68 possible fonts. Any ideas how I narrow it down from there? They all check out ok in Font Book.

I also found a bit on the Inkscape wiki about force rebuilding the font cache, by removing the 'fonts.cache-1' file from the library, but it had no effect.

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su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#5

any messages in 'Console.app' that are related to Inkscape or X11?

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Best su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#6

Sorry, I don't have time today to search... but if nothing else I'd do
it like this:

put half of the suspect fonts back
start inkscape
if it runs ok -> suspect font is in the other half
put half of the other half back
start inkscape
if it fails -> suspect font is in this quarter
take the last added quarter of fonts out, put half of it back
start inkscape
...

that should let you find the culprit(s) with a lot less then 68 times
restarting inkscape ;)

hth, ~suv

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E (pickanynumber) said : 		#7

Thanks ~suv, that solved my question.

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E (pickanynumber) said : 		#8

Thanks. I've tracked down the offending font - 'WAVE____.TTF'

Your halve, quarter, eighth method gave me a bit of a Doh! *head slap* why-didn't-I-think-of-that moment ;)

Below is what the console reported if it's any use for bug tracking etc..

XFree86 Version 4.4.0 / X Window System
(protocol Version 11, revision 0, vendor release 6600)
[DRI] screen 0 installation complete
Screen 0 added: 1920x1200 @ (0,0)
Could not init font path element /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/, removing from list!
bash: no job control in this shell

(inkscape-bin:284): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
 Using the fallback 'C' locale.

Emergency save activated!
Jul 10 11:40:59 G5 crashdump[349]: inkscape-bin crashed
Emergency save completed. Inkscape will close now.

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su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#9

Glad you could figure it out and have Inkscape running again!
The console log shows nothing unexpected/unusual - thanks anyway.

Did you see - there's the first Tiger 0.47 prerelease build up on sf.net
- I'm sure any feedback in the bug tracker from Tiger users would be
welcome and helpful - if you feel up to testing beta versions ;)

'Inkscape-0.47-pre1-1.TIGER-Intel.dmg' on
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/files/>. I think it's the
first Tiger build since 0.46-3...

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su_v (suv-lp) said : 		#10

A late follow-up to your question how to best find a problematic font: I just stumbled over an old bug report with an interesting tip in the comments: <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/176058> (Comment 12)

"Thanks for those Terminal ideas. I tried both, trashing Inkscape and rebuilding font cache. Nothing. I at least got the alert at starting Inkscape that it might take a while for the font cache to be built, but as I had console open, as soon as I clicked OK, Inkscape crashed and a log was written. I have not been able to see the program run at all, so I am unable to preview a font in Inkscape to see if it crashes. It never starts. In Activity Monitor I see "Inkscape (not responding)" and "Inkscape-bin"...

I decided to inspect the "Inkscape-bin" process and its open files and ports. It seemed to be stuck on a font and when I located it and deleted it, voila! Inkscape opened, finally! Even with the fonts disabled in Font Book, it was still getting stuck on it. Anyways, I think I've got it. Thanks. Go ahead and close bug if you want."

just in case it happens again… ;-)

hth, ~suv

ps. 'inspect' is available in Activity Monitor, the toolbar button 'i' in the upper left corner.

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E (pickanynumber) said : 		#11

Thanks for that. Useful to know.

I'm just downloading the 0.47 beta as I type....