[R] X11 font at size 6 could not be loaded

[Wittner, Ben, Ph.D.]

I recently upgraded my OS to Fedora 8 from Red Hat Enterprise Work Station 3.
Before I upgraded certain operations would produce a warning to the effect that
a desired font was not available so one had been substituted, which was okay.
After the upgrade to Fedora 8, the plotting operation halts midway through and I
get the following error message:
"X11 font at size 6 could not be loaded"
This is not okay, because plotting does not complete.

I've also gotten that message regarding size 8.

In R, if it do getOption("X11fonts") I get
[1] "-adobe-helvetica-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
[2] "-adobe-symbol-medium-r-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"

If from bash I do xlsfonts, I see that I have fonts that match, but the smallest
seem to be 11 points:
-adobe-helvetica-bold-o-normal--11-80-100-100-p-60-iso10646-1
-adobe-helvetica-bold-o-normal--11-80-100-100-p-60-iso8859-1

If I run the same program on my Fedora 8 system but use an X server on a Windows
PC (Hummingbird X server), I have no problem.

If I can't fix this, this is a disaster for me because some of the most common
things I do are afflicted by this problem.

Can anyone help me get adobe-helvetica 6 and 8 point fonts onto my system or
give any other advice?

Thanks very much.
-Ben

p.s., I also tried in R
options(X11fonts="-misc-fixed-%s-%s-*-*-%d-*-*-*-*-*-*-*")
but that resulted in
Error in X11(display, width, height, pointsize, if (is.null(gamma)) 1 else
gamma,  : 
  invalid 'fonts' value
when I tried to plot.

p.p.s, here's my version information
platform       i686-pc-linux-gnu           
arch           i686                        
os             linux-gnu                   
system         i686, linux-gnu             
status                                     
major          2                           
minor          6.1                         
year           2007                        
month          11                          
day            26                          
svn rev        43537                       
language       R                           
version.string R version 2.6.1 (2007-11-26)

The information transmitted in this electronic communication is intended only
for the person or entity to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential
and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other
use of or taking of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or
entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this
information in error, please contact the Compliance HelpLine at 800-856-1983 and
properly dispose of this information.