gtk-based programs have problem with TTF fonts...

[mi at aldan.algebra.com]

Hello!

For some reason, fonts in both native firefox and pidgin (the only two 
gtk/gnome applications in use here) no longer render as anything, but 
boxes. On stderr there are scaring warnings like:

    (Pidgin:20448): Pango-WARNING **: font_face status is: out of memory

    (Pidgin:20448): Pango-WARNING **: scaled_font status is: out of memory

    (Pidgin:20448): Pango-WARNING **: shaping failure, expect ugly
    output. shape-engine='BasicEngineFc', font='DejaVu Sans Bold 12',
    text='....'

According to search-engines, people have seen this problem under Linux, 
but the fixes/workarounds proposed seem both voodoo and too 
Linux-centric :-(

The linux-firefox continues to work fine, which suggests, the actual 
fonts themselves are still Ok. I even tried moving the user's home 
directory aside and making her login afresh -- but the problem 
persisted, so it is not related to the user-settings.

I even did `portupgrade -aRr' and still have the problem.

Any ideas? Thanks!

    -mi