I can't get "dia" working with fonts on my system (Debian 3.0, with a non-Debian-packaged XFree 4.3.0 install (.deb unavailable, needed for my video hardware.)) (I've tried xfig, and after 15 minutes I loathe the user interface.)

I've tried both dia 0.88.1 (standard version with Debian 3.0) and dia 0.91 (a backport from www-users.cs.umn.edu/~sdier/debian/updates/wup)

With dia 0.88, when I first try to enter text I get a pop-up "Warning no X Font for Courier found, using fixed instead." I've tried changing font, but none of the others work either. The text is readable, but:
* Is always the same (small) size and style
* On export to .eps, the font comes out correct, but cropped incorrectly.
I.e. the fonts display incorrectly but are saved correctly, making it exceedingly hard to compose any diagrams with text.

With dia 0.91, there are no error messages, but all characters are about 1 pixel each. Exported to .eps, the characters are still 1 pixel each.

I have followed the procedure in ww w.akos.uklinux.net/deuglification/ but this didn't help. Here are a few extracts to show what I've done with this:

$ cd /usr/local/share/fonts/
$ ls -F
dia/ ttfonts/
$ ls ttfonts | head
ahronbd.ttf
andlso.ttf
arial.ttf
arialbd.ttf
arialbi.ttf
ariali.ttf
ariblk.ttf
artrbdo.ttf
artro.ttf
cmex10.ttf
$ ls dia
fonts.dir fonts.dir.old fonts.scale
$ head dia/fonts.dir
51
../ttfonts/ariali.ttf -Adobe-Helvetica-medium-o-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
../ttfonts/arial.ttf -Adobe-Helvetica-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
../ttfonts/arialbd.ttf -Adobe-Helvetica-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
../ttfonts/arialbi.ttf -Adobe-Helvetica-bold-o-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
../ttfonts/courbd.ttf -Adobe-Courier-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
../ttfonts/courbi.ttf -Adobe-Courier-bold-o-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
../ttfonts/couri.ttf -Adobe-Courier-medium-o-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
../ttfonts/cour.ttf -Adobe-Courier-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
../ttfonts/times.ttf -Adobe-Times-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1

$ grep -C FontPath /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
ModulePath "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts/"
FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts/dia/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/"
EndSection

On exiting from either version of dia, I get the (possibly irrelevant) message:

** (dia:658): CRITICAL **: file app_procs.c: line 536 (app_exit): assertion `!app_exit_once' failed

(dia:658): Gtk-WARNING **: A floating object was finalized. This means that someone
called g_object_unref() on an object that had only a floating
reference; the initial floating reference is not owned by anyone
and must be removed with gtk_object_sink() after a normal
reference is obtained with g_object_ref().

(dia:658): Gtk-WARNING **: A floating object was finalized. This means that someone
called g_object_unref() on an object that had only a floating
reference; the initial floating reference is not owned by anyone
and must be removed with gtk_object_sink() after a normal
reference is obtained with g_object_ref().

(dia:658): Gtk-WARNING **: A floating object was finalized. This means that someone
called g_object_unref() on an object that had only a floating
reference; the initial floating reference is not owned by anyone
and must be removed with gtk_object_sink() after a normal
reference is obtained with g_object_ref().

I'm not sure if it helps but Dia 0.91 works here on Debian. I started Dia and then "FIel -> New -> T -> click into the document -> right-click -> dialogs -> characteristics (not sure about its english translation here) -> Font size -> 2.00 (for example) -> OK"

Seems to work. If you still have problems, try to make a symbolic link ~/.fonts to your font directory /usr/local/share/fonts/. Gnome seems to need that on some systems for TT fonts.

Hope this helps.

The stuff with changing font size I had already tried.

I have now tried the ".fonts" soft link, and it doesn't make any difference. Tried with Dia 0.88 and 0.91, linking to .../fonts or to .../fonts/dia.

I have found that in Dia 0.91 when I bring up the font selection window (rt-click on text, dialog->properties ->Font=other fonts, it comes up with a font family selection window that correctly previews the fonts, so Dia is getting correct fonts at some level.

Well, the soft link was supposed to let your font selector display your TT fonts correctly.

Try to look for "dia and xfree 4.3" or "fonts and xfree 4.3". A hint may be this. This is my best guess since I can export to *.eps without problems and ggv displays my Arial Font correcty with xfree 4.2.1-12.1

Sorry.