Why are the fonts all screwy for remote X11 apps on one Mac client?

Question

I have two Mac OS X clients, both running XQuartz 2.1.6 (xorg-server 1.4.2-apple33). When I SSH into a remote linux system enabling X11 forwarding and launch gnome-terminal, on one Mac the terminal looks correct while on the other, the fonts are all screwy!

[jnet@Stan ~]$ ssh -X jnet@kyle.local gnome-terminal produces:

powerbook:~ hp$ ssh -X jnet@kyle.local gnome-terminal produces:

The problem goes away on the powerbook if I zoom in twice:

Edit: This affects a number of apps, not just gnome-terminal. It also affects Thunderbird, for example.

Answer 1

Looks like a font problem - run Font Book.app, click All Fonts, then select all the fonts in the middle pane (cmd-a) and choose File -> Validate Font from the menu. This will produce a report of any fonts with issues.

If you find a broken font file, look where it is residing:

• if it's a system font (any path not in /Users), replace it from install media or the working Mac (easier)
• if it's a user font (any path in /Users), delete it - the system fonts should be sufficient, but user fonts take precedence, so if the user installed some borked font it can cause this.