Frequent Warning messages using gv

[Adam Dinwoodie]

On Wed, 5 Oct 2022 at 06:46, Fergus Daly wrote:
> Whenever I use gv on a PostScript file as in
> $ gv filename.ps
> then a (usually) successful display is (almost invariably) accompanied by Warning messages about font conversions.
> It is not obvious what limitations or errors are affecting the displayed output, if any, and I have got into the habit
> of issuing the command with the qualifier
> $ gv filename.ps 2> /dev/null
> However: the Warning messages whilst occasionally very esoteric nearly always include the form
> Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
> Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-Helvetica-Bold-R-Normal--*-120-*-*-P-*-ISO8859-1" to type FontStruct
> Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-Helvetica-Medium-R-Normal--*-100-*-*-P-*-ISO8859-1" to type FontStruct
> Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-Helvetica-Medium-R-Normal--*-120-*-*-P-*-ISO8859-1" to type FontStruct
> Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-Helvetica-Medium-R-Normal--*-140-*-*-P-*-ISO8859-1" to type FontStruct
> Is there some additional fonts package or group of packages that I could usefully incorporate into my Cygwin setup that
> would reduce warnings when using gv? (And maybe improve the rendering of outputs.)
> My directory /usr/share/fonts/microsoft/ contains 120+ ttf links, though none looking anything like helv*.

I doubt it. I'm not familiar with gv, but this looks like you're
trying to process documents that incorporate Helvetica, in a way that
requires having the font files, without having the font files.
Helvetica is a trademark, and the font files are under copyright, so
no Cygwin package is going to be able to include the fonts or even
include substitutes with matching filenames.

You *might* be able to add symlinks from the missing Helvetica files
to more readily available metric-identical alternatives you already
have access to, e.g. Arial, MS Sans Serif, or Liberation Sans.
Otherwise I suspect you need to either avoid processing files that
incorporate fonts you don't own, or buy copies of the relevant
Helvetica typefaces.