Yes - I have just had en email dialogue with a member of LUG to get Mdk 9.1 so will go for that when it arrives.

Thanks for all your time. Much appreciated.

I had the same problem after upgrading the Gimp (to 1.2.5).

The new default font used by the Gimp was not available on the system, so I had to change my ~/.gimp-1.2/gtkrc to contain valid fonts. In my case I used the following:

style "default"
{
font = "adobe-standard-medium-r-normal--*-100-*-*-*-*-*-*"
}

widget_class "*" style "default"

Things probably work under Gnome because it probably sets the default font to something valid that the Gimp then inherits.

The problem with your package manager is probably something similar. You could try adding the previous section to ~/.gtkrc.

Hope this helps ...