problem with fonts in art backend

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

I'm trying to get the art backend working on 32-bit linux to see if I  
can reproduce a bug other people are having with display which I  
cannot reproduce in my 64bit environment.

I'm running debian unstable em64t and have a chroot environment with  
a 32bit copy of debian unstable inside it.
Within this 32bit environment, I've built all the gnustep code, but  
whn I try to run a gnustep app I get streams of errors saying
"Error when loading '/usr/GNUstep/System/Library/Fonts/ 
Helvetica.nfont/no19003l.pfb' (00000003)"
The font file exists and is the same as the version which works fine  
in my 64bit environment.
I think the error code comes from the freetype library (version  
2.2.1-5), and I've tried reverting to the same version that's in the  
64bit environment, without it making any difference.

Has anyone come across this problem and how to solve it before?