font spacing / 8.0

Hi, I have been looking at anti-aliasing ( I do not use KDE ). Certain fonts are appearing very widely spaced out ( overly so ) whilst others do not. I have tried sorting fonts.scale etc alphabetically as was suggested somewhere to no avail. Also what is the purpose of the fonts.scale.x86 files as I can find no reference to them the font literature that I have found. Cheers , TIA and Merry Christmas Francesco