So, you are missing fonts … try to install:
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi
Then try:
xlsfonts |grep -i “helvetica-medium-r”
If you still get the “missing font” message, try to modify your:
root-config --etcdir/system.rootrc
and change different “Gui.*Font” settings to use “-11-” instead of “-10-”, for example.
BTW. Note that for the “X Font library (Xft)” client-side font API to work, appropriate X11 fonts must be installed on the “X11 client” machine (i.e. where you run ROOT). On Ubuntu 14 and 16 one possibly needs to install “gsfonts-x11” (and/or “xfonts-scalable” and/or “fonts-dejavu-core”) while on CentOS 6 and 7 “urw-fonts” (and/or “xorg-x11-fonts-Type1” and/or “dejavu-sans-fonts”) packages.
P.S. I don’t think you need “X Font Server (xfs)” at all. I use Ubuntu, which does not provide it.