Conference unxa::cde

637.0. "BadFont error crashing application" by AOSF1::kras (Cyber-Shredder) Fri Apr 18 1997 16:37

I have an ISV whose application exhibits a strange problem under CDE.

If you drop-down one of their menus, the application crashes with a 
"BadFont" message.  The problem does not occur when running under
Decwindows, and it does not occur if the below mentioned changes are
made to the resource file.  Unfortunately, I can't find these resources
documented anyplace that would give me a clue if this is his problem or
ours.

Anyone see this before, or have ideas?

Thanks

> 
> Accessing the "Group" menu from the menu bar terminates both versions and
> threads with the following error:
> 
> X Error of failed request:  BadFont (invalid Font parameter)
>   Major opcode of failed request:  56 (X_ChangeGC)
>   Resource id in failed request:  0xffffffff
>   Serial number of failed request:  1241
>   Current serial number in output stream:  1247
> 
> I was able to trace this to some of the CDE default resource settings.  CDE
> locates default resources in /usr/dt/config/C/sys.resources and - for custom
> resources for the specific system - /var/dt/config/C/sys.resources.  I don't
> know why, but if the following lines were commented out and these resources
> reloaded, this crash did not occur:
> 
> (At line 74 of /usr/dt/config/C/sys.resources)
> !  ifdef out the *enable* stuff so Razor does not crash when 
> ! group menu dropped down.
> #ifdef  NEVER
> *enableThinThickness:                   True
> *enableBtn1Transfer:                    button2_transfer
> *enableButtonTab:                       True
> *enableDefaultButton:                   True
> *enableEtchedInMenu:                    True
> *enableMenuInCascade:                   True
> *enableMultiKeyBindings:                True
> *enableToggleColor:                     True
> *enableToggleVisual:                    True
> *enableDragIcon:                        True
> *enableCDEColorFactors:                 True
> #endif
> 
> Again, I have no idea why this was needed - I've never seen it before, and
> only found it by the process of elimination.
> 

>>Anyone see this before, or have ideas?

> (At line 74 of /usr/dt/config/C/sys.resources)
> !  ifdef out the *enable* stuff so Razor does not crash when 
> ! group menu dropped down.
> #ifdef  NEVER
> *enableThinThickness:                   True
> *enableBtn1Transfer:                    button2_transfer
> *enableButtonTab:                       True
> *enableDefaultButton:                   True
> *enableEtchedInMenu:                    True
> *enableMenuInCascade:                   True
> *enableMultiKeyBindings:                True
> *enableToggleColor:                     True
> *enableToggleVisual:                    True
> *enableDragIcon:                        True
> *enableCDEColorFactors:                 True
> #endif
> 

I've seen this happen with another application when working on a QAR.
In that particular case, we found that the *enableThinThickness resource
was causing the application to core dump. The workaround was for the
app-defaults file for that application to reset the value to False, 
leaving the rest of the resources alone in /usr/dt/config/C/sys.resources.

These are actually Motif resources changed between V1.2-3 and V1.2-4, 
which supplied support for CDE. Unfortunately, our man pages for Motif
weren't upgraded to reflect the changes to document these settings 
for V4.0.