Octave Fontconfig error

Question

I installed Octave via Homebrew using the instructions given here.

When I try to generate a plot, I get the following message:

Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file
warning: could not match any font: *-normal-normal-10
warning: called from
    axes at line 66 column 10
    gca at line 58 column 9
    newplot at line 148 column 8
    surf at line 70 column 9
    sombrero at line 65 column 5

I then get a long series of the following messages:

warning: ft_render: unable to load appropriate font
warning: could not match any font: *-normal-normal-10

Usually the plot appears once, but if I call it again then Octave quits with the following message.

panic: Segmentation fault: 11 -- stopping myself...
attempting to save variables to 'octave-workspace'...
warning: unable to open 'octave-workspace' for writing...
warning: called from
    __gnuplot_drawnow__>gnuplot_trim_term at line 368 column 10
    __gnuplot_drawnow__>gnuplot_set_term at line 119 column 20
    __gnuplot_drawnow__ at line 84 column 16
Segmentation fault: 11

In discussions of similar errors I have often seen references to /etc/fonts/fonts.conf. My /etc directory does not contain a fonts subdirectory. This may be the source of the problem, but I do not know how to fix it. When I run, brew install fontconfig, I get Warning: fontconfig-2.11.1_1 already installed. When I run sudo find / -name fonts.conf, I get /opt/X11/lib/X11/fontconfig/fonts.conf.

brew doctor produces the following warnings, which may be relevant and which I do not know how to fix (short of uninstalling Anaconda):

Warning: Anaconda is known to frequently break Homebrew builds, including Vim 
and MacVim, due to bundling many duplicates of system and Homebrew-available
tools.

If you encounter a build failure please temporarily remove Anaconda
from your $PATH and attempt the build again prior to reporting the
failure to us. Thanks!

Warning: "config" scripts exist outside your system or Homebrew directories.
`./configure` scripts often look for *-config scripts to determine if
software packages are installed, and what additional flags to use when
compiling and linking.

Having additional scripts in your path can confuse software installed via
Homebrew if the config script overrides a system or Homebrew provided
script of the same name. We found the following "config" scripts:
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/curl-config
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/freetype-config
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/libdynd-config
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/libpng-config
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/libpng16-config
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/python-config
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/python2-config
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/python2.7-config
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/xml2-config
    /Users/greg/anaconda/bin/xslt-config

I am running OS X 10.11.3 (El Capitan).

score 41 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 03 '16 at 21:51

41

try

brew uninstall fontconfig

brew install fontconfig --universal

if you don't have or don't want to use xquartz, you can use qt

brew uninstall gnuplot

brew install gnuplot --with-qt

edited Apr 03 '16 at 21:51

Viet

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answered Mar 28 '16 at 09:41

Gabiden

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Wish I could tell you how many things I tried before finding this answer.. Thank you so much – David John Smith May 30 '16 at 03:49
Got a deprecated warning on - brew install gnuplot --with-qt. This worked: brew install gnuplot --with-qt5 – bsandhu Aug 16 '16 at 15:13
This works for OSX 10.11.6 (El Capitan) and Octave 4.0.3. – Chris Jaynes Sep 14 '16 at 18:42

score 39 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 07 '16 at 05:33

39

Actually, it's not an issue of Octave, but of its complicated setup and misconfiguration of other utilities (especially fontconfig).

For proper work you need to set manually path for fontconfig, so it wouldn't look for fonts in inappropriate directory (/etc/fonts works for Linux installations, but OS X XQuartz goes to different place).

You should run command export FONTCONFIG_PATH=/opt/X11/lib/X11/fontconfig to setup fontconfig proper way. Also you can add line export FONTCONFIG_PATH=/opt/X11/lib/X11/fontconfig to your ~/.bash_profile and restart your terminal, so you don't need to run this command anymore.

answered Feb 07 '16 at 05:33

OleGG

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Is there an efficient way to learn these kinds of techniques? Maybe a book I could read for understanding how things like bash profiles and Unix-type file systems work? – gsganden Feb 08 '16 at 19:07
Unfortunately, I can't recommend something specific, it comes from experience and tries and errors. I spent about an hour to fix this issue by googling error messages and comparing issues reproduced by others with my configuration – OleGG Feb 08 '16 at 22:47
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This helped me out a bunch - thanks. Note: you need to have http://www.xquartz.org/ installed for this to work. – jameswilsterman Feb 15 '16 at 09:01
Thanks so much for this answer. Helped a ton! – Jim Clouse Jul 20 '16 at 13:39
@OleGG can't help praising you for this. Instead of 3 hours late home, i'll now be 1 hour late home. Thank you! – blue-sky Dec 19 '16 at 18:49

Octave Fontconfig error

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