Hello, 

I upgraded my X client box to 1.6 yesterday, to start playing with GTK2. 
My X server is  still NetBSD 1.5, XFree86 3.3.6.  According to xdpyinfo,
SVGA doesn't support the RENDER extension.  

The X client box is where I built and want run Bluefish, a GTK2 app.  The
box has X installed (but not configured) only because it was easy to say
"full installation".  

Bluefish builds but does not run:

> $ bluefish --help
> Xlib:  extension "RENDER" missing on display "lowden:0.0".
> No fonts found; this probably means that the fontconfig
> library is not correctly configured. You may need to
> edit the fonts.conf configuration file. More information
> about fontconfig can be found in the fontconfig(3) manual
> page and on http://fontconfig.org

I wrote to bluefish-dev about this, and received:

> the problem is not the RENDER extension or bluefish. The problem is that
> your gtk2 version is compiled to use the RENDER extension. This is a
> gtk2 issue, or an issue with one of the libraries part of gtk (I would
> expect this to be a libpango compile option). 

Ush.  I think I'm in, as George's dad used to say, deep doo-doo.  

I'm posting this message for two reasons:

1.  If true, the RENDER extension requirement represents a subtle
dependency, one that perhaps needs some environmental control.  The right
answer can't be reached by interrogation, because the builder can't know
the display's capabilities if it's remote.  

2.  To seek advice. What to do?  Try to exclude RENDER requirements from
the pkgsrc version of GTK2?  Upgrade the X server on my workstation?
(meaning I have to upgrade it, too, which I was trying to avoid for now). 
Would xonx be any help?  

--jkl