http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3842
Summary: No default font defined in winecfg Product: Wine Version: 0.9.1. Platform: PC OS/Version: Linux Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: major Priority: P2 Component: wine-x11driver AssignedTo: wine-bugs@winehq.org ReportedBy: triad@df.lth.se
When launching winecfg on a machine which does not have an Arial.ttf font anywhere in its font paths, winecfg comes up with all characters as blocks.
winecfg obviously wants to use the default font, which is by default Arial.ttf, and when it cannot find this, only placeholders are displayed.
Workaround:
Putting Arial.ttf into a machine-global search path, or into the users home directory in ~/.fonts, or into a the .wine/c_drive/windows/fonts will fix the problem.
However for the common user the solution will not be obvious, and many e.g. Linux distributions cannot redistribute any Windows core fonts like Arial.ttf.
Proposed solution:
I believe it is possible to make the default font an alias to a common X font. There was a config option prior to winecfg that would take care of this, but I haven't been able to get that working for the new configuration system. (I believe it will have to be maintained globally in wine.ini.) Also, this default X font needs to be made into a fallback whenever the default (Arial) font can not be located when running under X, so that this situation does not occur.
Perhaps winecfg is also in need of a font selection tab which will make X font replacements for core fonts a simple thing...