Stefan,
Actually I have files in that dir...
howarth@bogus:/usr/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType$ ls
encodings.dir fonts.dir fonts.scale
What I finally figured out was that I was getting the sans font
as the default setting and could change that for the desktop and
applications using the Applications->Desktop Preferences->Fonts
menu item. I ended up using helvetica and lucida but I don't
remember what gnome2 was defaulting to before.
Jack