Watch out for old versions of Tcl/Tk (8.4 or older)

Tcl/Tk 8.4 and earlier tried to a lot of guessing about the fonts, and often got things wrong. Use Tcl/Tk 8.5 or newer with Pd and the fonts will work much better.

If you are running a Debian-based GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Knoppix, etc), try making sure that your wish shell is 8.5 or newer:

sudo apt-get install tk8.5

sudo update-alternatives --config wish

Rebuild the Font Database

This is because Pd cannot find the correct font. First, you need to make sure that you have the right font-handling packages installed, ttf-dejavu and x-ttcidfont-conf. You can check those in Synaptic

If they were already installed, then try reinstalling them, using this command in the Terminal:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall x-ttcidfont-conf ttf-dejavu

Specify a Font

One can also try to use the -font-face startup option. You can search for fonts with the "fc-match" command like:

$ fc-match mono

The best known fonts for Pd on GNU/Linux are "Courier 10 Pitch", "DejaVu Sans Mono", "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono", "Droid Sans Mono", and "Andale Mono".

$ pd -font-face "Andale Mono"