I was having this problem previously. Selecting font tab in modify style Or Format->Character would crash Writer. This was on a new sarge/sid KDE desktop that I reinstall a couple weeks ago. So last week (on the 10/01/2005) I was getting this happening with a document I was writing. Now today for some reason its not occuring. Unfortunately I don't have apt-listchanges install, otherwise I might tell if anything I've upgraded since this date might have affected this.
I confirm this chnage. However, single word color selection is still impossible (see bug #289715) and, from experience, a bug that misteriously disappear may also reappear...
-- eric