Bug#896684: fontconfig-config: Fontconfig error: Cannot load config file from /etc/fonts/fonts.conf, due to many errors

[Damien Couroussé]

Package: fontconfig-config
Version: 2.13.0-4
Followup-For: Bug #896684


I experience the same problem, with a similar setup -- albeit minor differences.
The problem appears for a lot of applications run from the terminal, e.g. gitk.

Following https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=235643, I suspect that
there is a dependency mismatch in fontconfig packages:

$ LANG=C dpkg -l '*fontconfig*'
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                    Version          Architecture     Description
+++-=======================-================-================-====================================================
ii  fontconfig              2.11.0-6.7+b1    amd64            generic font configuration library - support binarie
ii  fontconfig-config       2.13.0-4         all              generic font configuration library - configuration
un  libfontconfig           <none>           <none>           (no description available)
un  libfontconfig-dev       <none>           <none>           (no description available)
ii  libfontconfig1:amd64    2.12.6-0.1       amd64            generic font configuration library - runtime
ii  libfontconfig1:i386     2.12.6-0.1       i386             generic font configuration library - runtime
ii  libfontconfig1-dev:amd6 2.12.6-0.1       amd64            generic font configuration library - development


regards,
Damien

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.4
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (900, 'stable'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (300, 'testing'), (100, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-6-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.utf8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=fr_FR.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages fontconfig-config depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.61
ii  fonts-dejavu-core      2.37-1
ii  fonts-liberation       1:1.07.4-2
ii  ttf-bitstream-vera     1.10-8
ii  ucf                    3.0036

fontconfig-config recommends no packages.

fontconfig-config suggests no packages.

-- debconf information:
  fontconfig/hinting_type: Native
  fontconfig/hinting_style: hintslight
  fontconfig/subpixel_rendering: Automatic
  fontconfig/enable_bitmaps: false