getting applications from Nix to have access to fonts

[Benjamin Slade]

I'm having trouble getting external applications, specifically things
installed via Nix, to have access to fonts, which often is the
difference between them working or not working.

For instance, I installed Gargoyle (the text adventure/interactive
fiction interpreter - http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/ ) from Nix. If I set
gtk2 to use something other than 'sans' as the default font, when I try
to launch Gargoyle, it hangs, with the terminal output `Fontconfig
error: Cannot load default config file`. I have similar issues with
other pieces of software; those which don't hang, usually just have
access to whatever fonts they're actually packaged with, and not any of
the fonts on my system (including fonts installed via Nix itself).

In #guixsd, pkill9 recommended adding `~/.local/bin` to PATH in
~/.profile, and creating a wrapper like this:

<----------------#+BEGIN_SRC bash------------>
#!/bin/sh
# Wrapper to run Gargoyle built and packaged by Nix

MESA_LIB=$(dirname $(realpath /run/current-system/profile/lib/libGL.so)) #To 
get webgl working
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$MESA_LIB${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:}$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
#export FONTCONFIG_PATH="$(guix build 
fontconfig)/etc/fonts${FONTCONFIG_PATH:+:}$FONTCONFIG_PATH"
export FONTCONFIG_PATH="$(guix build fontconfig)/etc/fonts"

exec -a "$0" "/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/$USER/profile/bin/gargoyle" "$@"
<-----------------#+END_SRC------------------->


However, even doing this, I end up with exactly the same issues. (And
I've tried calling the script directly, e.g. with
`~/.local/bin/gargoyle`, just in case the PATH from .profile wasn't
working correctly.)

Does anyone have any insight or suggestions on how to resolve this?


-- 
Benjamin Slade - https://babbagefiles.xyz
  `(pgp_fp: ,(21BA 2AE1 28F6 DF36 110A 0E9C A320 BBE8 2B52 EE19))
    '(sent by mu4e on Emacs running under GNU/Linux . https://gnu.org )
       `(Choose Linux ,(Choose Freedom) . https://linux.com )