Font File error....

[FMorales <altf2o attbi com>]

I've gotten this weird error, and i'm sure it's something pretty simple, 
just cannot figure
it out. I've gotten it with every GTK+2.x i installed. It works like this :

** (ex1:3288): WARNING **: Cannot open font file for font Nimbus Sans L, 10

Now i only get that if i run a GTK+2.x program as a user while in GNOME. 
If i run the same
program or ANY other GTK+2.x program while in GNOME as /root/ , it works 
fine...
To make it even weirder if i run ANY GTK+2.x program while a user OR 
root in any other
Window Manager it works just fine... Very strange IMO.

Now i've tried to trace the problem with gdb, and i've recieved this 
output :

(gdb) run
Starting program: /home/altf2o/GTKSource/ex1

** (ex1:3288): WARNING **: Cannot open font file for font Nimbus Sans L, 10

Program recieved signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x407e8378 in XftCharIndex (dpy=0x0, pub=0x80ad658, ucs4=66) at 
xftglyphs.c:716
716:        while(font->hash_table[ent].ucs4 != ucs4)
(gdb)

My system is :
Linux 2.4.18 kernel
GCC 3.2.1

GTK+ Files :
atk-1.2.0
freetype-2.1.3
pango-1.2.0
pkgconfig-0.14.0
glib-2.2.0
gtk+ 2.2.1

Any help on this weird error, or a point in the right direction would be 
greatly appreciated.. Thx in advance.
....FrankM....