Comment # 5 on bug 1118557 from Stefan Br�ns

(In reply to Ulrich Windl from comment #4)
> When running "xfontsel", I see the very same error messages:
> ~> xfontsel
> Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
> Warning: Unable to load any usable fontset
> 
> However it's not that I have no fonts installed:
> ~> fc-list | wc -l
> 3308
> ~> fc-list | grep -i helveti | wc -l
> 110
> ~> fc-list | grep -i helvetica.*bold | wc -l
> 50

You are confusing fontconfig (client side) and the legacy X11 Core/serverside
fonts. xfontsel uses the legacy X11 Core fonts.

To see which fonts are available via the Core fonts mechanism, do
$> grep "helvetica-medium-r-.*-12-" /usr/share/fonts/*/fonts.dir