I believe this problem could be considered a bug - or at least an error
in the installation of Debian.
I encountered it on Woody, and now have encountered the same problem on
Sarge.
Specifically, the standard fonts that are installed include
Nimbus Sans L, and
Nimbus Sans L Condensed.
Nimbus Sans L is very similar to Helvetica or Arial and is important to
have for interoperability with Windows machines.
However, when characters are formatted Nimbus Sans L in Abiword and in
OpenOffice, it is actually Nimbus Sans L Condensed that is displayed and
printed. This means that there is no Arial/Helvetica equivalent font
available to the user.
On Woody, I deleted n019043l.pfb, n019044l.pfb, n019063l.pfb,
n019064l.pfb from /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1. Then I ran type1inst in
that directory, ran xset fp rehash, deleted XftCache. Atger rebooting,
there were no more "Condensed" fonts and the real Nimbus Sans L was used
in Abiword (I didn't have OpenOffice).
On Sarge, the behaviour is stranger. I deleted the same files, which
fixed the problem for Abiword but not OpenOffice. Then I restored the
files. Still, Abiword used the correct Nimbus Sans L.
I have spent a significant amount of time trying to understand the font
system, and all that happens is that I follow symbolic links in
circles. So perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I can identify the
problem here. I suspect it has something to do with inappropriate font
substitutions being specifed in the configuration that is set up by
Debian Installer.