So far tonight, I have neglected my diabetic pet, bent the frame of my cubicle from punching it in absolute wordless rage and frustration, and severely frightened the poor woman who came to empty the wastebaskets and saw the look on my face. I have job deadline looming, and documents that aren't anywhere near finished, and no fonts. I have OpenOffice 1.0.1. My documents seem to display in one single sheisenfont. That is, no matter what I choose for the font attribute of a Paragraph Style or a Character Style, they are all and always substituted by the exrementafont. Once again, I have gone to the KDE Control Center, and System, and Font Installer. I heeded the warning that I must use Administrator Mode if I want my font-ish stuff applied globally. I viewed the dual windows with "Install From:" on the left, and "Install To:" on the right. There's nothing of importance in the "Install From:" window. The "Install To:" window already has dozens... hundreds, thousands of fonts in X11 Fonts Directory. There are files in the /75dpi directory, in the /Speedo directory, in the /Type1 directory, in the /URW directory, in the /misc directory, in the /truetype directory, in the /uni directory ... do I really need to go on???? They are bloody THERE! I'm looking at them... hundreds and hundreds of font files of several types. They are sitting there, apparently mocking me, in what this interface implies is ALREADY the place where fonts are supposed to go. There is nothing to suggest that I should need to perform some additional step. There's no other button to press, or field to fill in. Many of the names of those font files appear in the pick-lists within OpenOffice and other K and X applications. But it doesn't matter. I can pick any font I like, for any purpose (except for window dressing, which has flavors of Nimbus, and seems to work). It doesn't matter what I pick, it will be substituted for that one, single, ugly pieceofcrap font. I don't know what the substitute font is (it's something that runs the letters together and generally looks too ugly to NOT be intentional), and I don't care. When the "obvious" things, within the KDE interface did NOTHING to access the fonts that are all sitting there, I looked back in e-mails in this list, and went to the suggested SDB pages for 7.3 and 7.1 and did what they suggested, and it had a wonderful effect... NOT A DAMN THING! There are now a couple of extra files in /etc, and nothing at all has changed. Yes, I exited and restarted. No effect. What are all those .pfa, and .pfb, and .spd, and .pcf.gz, and .ttf files FOR, if they all already appear in the directories where the System>Font Installer (root) expects them to be, and they STILL %$#@&!! refuse to appear in my documents and applications? What is the Font Installer FOR, if not to install the fonts?? I have looked and looked and looked, and there is NO function or button or menu item that says: "Activate all the fonts that are already installed and uselessly sitting there." Really. I looked. I ran the Qt Configuration utility, and it was useless. I don't *need* to specify a substitution font... I need the bloody, actual FONTS! If the KDE Control Center is not able to make all the required things happen, it should not pretend that it can. The night security people are kicking out stragglers now, so I have to leave, with my work undone and in disarray. Tonight would not be a good night for anybody to be jaywalking, or driving badly in my city... Tomorrow will be really fun, explaining why I don't have the work done. Why is it this way? What is the purpose of making it this way? Why the mocking list of all the fonts that refuse to appear in my documents? If there is an "Activate your fonts" function, why must it be hidden somewhere? Whose idea was this? /kevin (beyond frustration in Ottawa, Canada)