nsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein) (09/27/90)
This isn't really exactly an Andrew bug, but it is a genuine problem that occurs when you're using LINKINSTALL_ENV and you have certain kinds of X terminals. The problem stems from the fact that some X terminals, at least, can't (or won't) follow symbolic links when obtaining fonts from NFS. Therefore it is actually necessary to point them to a single directory where all the fonts reside. Naturally, this means LINKINSTALL_ENV causes problems on the fonts. The easy fix for me was to just copy all the fonts to a single directory. Figuring out the problem & solution, however, was not so obvious. My suggestion is that a new installation variable be added, e.g. LINKINSTALLFONTS_ENV, that can easily permit LINKINSTALL_ENV to be used for everything *except* font installation. The reason I don't just completely shrug this off as a bug in the X terminal is that I've heard that it is considered, by some terminal manufacturers, to be some sort of security-related feature, and though this strikes me as really lame, it does suggest that they might not be planning to ever fix the problem... Cheers. -- Nathaniel