I typically update my Cygwin installations about once a month, and
rarely run into any difficulties. However, this morning after updating
I could no longer start any X applications due to some apparent font
problems. Please note that I successfully installed the *new* Cygwin/X
a couple of months ago, and previously resolved some of the seemingly
more common font problems (like "boxes" showing up in emacs).

This time, I was getting "Unable to load any usable iso8859 font"
errors anytime I'd try to start xterm. I searched the FAQs and the
web, but was unable to find any suggestions that led to a solution. At
one point, while trying to fix the problem, I also got the "could not
open default font 'fixed'" error, but none of the solutions listed in
the FAQ were applicable (either the problem described was obviously
not a match, or the solution, like re-installing all fonts, had
already been tried).

As a last resort, I used the Cygwin setup log to figure out which
packages had been updated, and rolled them all back to the versions I
was previously using. Now my X applications are working fine again, so
something in one of the updated packages definitely triggered this
problem.

Incidentally, the only unusual messages in XWin.0.log were the typical
"Could not init font path element" warnings that I always get (for
/usr/share/fonts//TTF, /usr/share/fonts/OTF, and
/usr/share/fonts/Type1). Sorry, I failed to save a copy of the
XWin.0.log when I was having these problems. Although, I don't know if
it would have been any help, because the X server itself seemed to be
starting fine.

Here is the list of packages that I updated to this morning (taken
from the Cygwin setup log):

compface/compface-1.5.2-1.tar.bz2
libapr1/libapr1-1.3.3-3.tar.bz2
nas/libaudio2/libaudio2-1.9.1-2.tar.bz2
X11/freetype2/libfreetype-devel/libfreetype-devel-2.3.8-1.tar.bz2
X11/freetype2/libfreetype2-devel/libfreetype2-devel-2.3.8-1.tar.bz2
X11/freetype2/libfreetype26/libfreetype26-2.3.8-1.tar.bz2
X11/freetype2/libfreetype6/libfreetype6-2.3.8-1.tar.bz2
gmp/libgmp3/libgmp3-4.2.4-1.tar.bz2
X.Org/libX11/libX11-devel/libX11-devel-1.1.5-2.tar.bz2
X.Org/libX11/libX11_6/libX11_6-1.1.5-2.tar.bz2
util-linux/util-linux-2.14.1-1.tar.bz2
xemacs/xemacs-21.4.22-1.tar.bz2
xemacs/xemacs-emacs-common/xemacs-emacs-common-21.4.22-1.tar.bz2
X.Org/xinit/xinit-1.1.1-1.tar.bz2
X.Org/xorg-server/xorg-server-1.5.3-5.tar.bz2
X11/xterm/xterm-238-1.tar.bz2
_update-info-dir/_update-info-dir-00796-1.tar.bz2

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