Newbie Question 1 (of countless)

[Lizard <lizard mrlizard com>]

Hi there.

I am trying run gnumeric. When I select it from the menu, nothing of
note occurs. Going out to the text screen, it informs me that it is
having problems with my fontmap file, ideally located in
/usr/share/fonts/fontmap or the like. Problem -- I have no such file,
anywhere. 

So then, my question is:How do I get a fontmap file? And why do the
rest of my apps seemingly work fine?

(Well, sort of fine. Some work very well, but a lot, usually the ones
I want to work with, either fail to install or core dump when I run
them, leading me to believe my installation is not quite correct.)