I've copied the Windows TTF fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New) to the Linux jre/lib/fonts directory. Made the fonts.scale with the command ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale. This converts the TTF fonts to the linux font names. Then you have to create the fonts.dir with the command "mkfontdir" command. This will copy the fonts.scale to the fonts.dir file. Now comes the most stupid task: You have to edit the fonts.property file for your locale. This is very boring because you have to specify a name for each entry. i.E.

  sans.0=-monotype-Times New Roman-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*0-iso8859-1
  sans.1=....
   .
   .
   .
  dialog.0=....

You have to do this for each font and style which means italic, bold, etc.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Copying the *.ttf files from Windows probably violates Microsoft's license, but if you're machine dual-boots Windows and Linux as mine does, I don't see how Microsoft can prevail if they sue you over it...]

2001-Mar-29 1:55pm gyles19@visi.com

  http://www.jguru.com/faq/view.jsp?EID=229424
 
  http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/2D/forDevelopers/java2dfaq.html

  http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/guide/internat/fontprop.html

I installed j2sdk1.3.0 from Sun, but had a very similar error message. In order to fix this, I changed the various symbol lines in the font.properties file like this;

FROM:

  --symbol-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*p-*-adobe-fontspecific

TO:

  -urw-symbol-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*p-*-urw-fontspecific

This change was made based on examining the fonts that I actually have available on my system which is a stock RedHat 7.0 plus necessry patches. So basically, you need to make the font.properties match what you actually have avaialble.

2001-Mar-29 4:20pm gyles19@visi.com

  monospaced.bolditalic.0=-monotype-Courier New-bold-i-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1

        COURBD.TTF -monotype-Courier New-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-1

  # Serif font definition
  #
  serif.0=-b&h-lucidabright-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-iso8859-1
  serif.1=-b&h-lucidabright-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-iso8859-1
  #replace .1 font line if you have zapf fonts
  #serif.1=--zapf dingbats-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-adobe-fontspecific
  serif.2=--symbol-medium-r-normal--*-%d-*-*-p-*-adobe-fontspecific

Your question implies your font.properties file replaces the * with 0. I don't think that's correct.

The fonts.dir file itself refers to them like this:

  LucidaBrightItalic.ttf        -b&h-lucidabright-medium-i-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1
  LucidaBrightRegular.ttf        -b&h-lucidabright-medium-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-iso8859-1