font selection errors

[Dave Howorth <dhoworth@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk>]

I have noticed what seems to be a problem with many applications when 
using fonts on my Debian Woody box. The applications ask for fonts that 
are installed on the system, but fail to find them. The applications 
handle it more or less gracefully, many revert to some default font 
while others refuse to start altogether.

As an example, acroread says:

Warning: Cannot convert string
"-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1"
to type FontStruct

but according to xfontsel, 4 names match
-adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1

xfontsel can also find fonts that other applications have difficulty with.

Does anybody have any idea what the problem is?

Thanks, Dave
--
Dave Howorth
MRC Centre for Protein Engineering
Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2QH
01223 252960