I have the same problem too. I upgraded my system from sarge to etch, then i installed emacs, when i started it s saw little squares instead of letter and in console there is a warning message: Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct
i fixed it by adding below line to ~/.Xresource Emacs*Font: -cronyx-fixed-bold-r-normal--16-120-100-100-c-80-koi8-r $ xrdb -load .Xresource On my laptop emacs was already installed when i migrated to etch and all it was ok. -- Best regards, Vitalie
