Just upgraded CentOS to (uname) "Linux 2.6.18-164.2.1.el5.plus #1 SMP Fri Oct 9 12:34:43 EDT 2009 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux" and since then, when emacs (version 21.4.1) starts up (using emacs -Q), where there should be text there are only little empty boxes, each the size of character. The error message reads: Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct I've tried running "emacs --font <font-spec>" with different font specs, but all of them error'd out also. "fc-list" shows 156 fonts available... you'd think emacs would be able to grab one of them and be happy with it. What's emacs doing or trying to do? Anybody have a 5.4 issue with fonts? tia for any help. -- War is a failure of the imagination. --William Blake