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GIMP seems to have found a niche in creating text based logos. Script-Fu certainly helped. Fonts are really a neccesity for people doing a lot of this sort of work.

>Free versions of the 35 standard PostScript fonts

With newer releases of ghostscript quality versions of the standard 35 Type 1 PostScript fonts are shipped. They were donated and licenced under the GPL by URW. You can get this package together with a custom made fonts.dir and fonts.scale file (which is the same as the fonts.dir file) from here. The fonts.dir was specially made to match the original Adobe names of the fonts, e.g. Times, Helvetica etc. With XFree86, these fonts are a must to have!

Just make sure that the fontpath lists the 75dpi or 100dpi bitmap fonts before the URW fonts, and make sure you have the string ":unscaled" appended to the bitmap font's fontpath. This way, the bitmap fonts will be used if they match, and the Type 1 versions will be used if the font needs to be scaled (this may only work with XFree86...). Below is the relevant section from a typical XF86Config file. 

    Section "Files"
       RgbPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
       FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled"
       FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
       FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
       FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/URW"
       FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
       FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
       FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
       FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
       FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
    EndSection

The package has a file called Fontmap from the ghostscript distribution. Please refere to this file for more info on licensing, copyright and information about the fonts and URW.

>Using Truetype fonts with Gimp and X

All font rendering in GIMP 1.0 is done by the X server that the Gimp is a client of. So installing fonts "for gimp" is really a matter of making the Xserver properly use those fonts.

Most Xserver support Adobe Type1 fonts and bitmap fonts. There are some commercial Xservers that include TrueType support, but the standard Xservers and XFree86 do not.

TrueType fonts are the standard font type used in Microsoft Windows, and has become the most popular font format. There are many many TrueType fonts avaiable from commercial packages and webs sites. Unfortunately, in many cases, GIMP is unable to use these fonts because the local Xserver doesnt support them.

There are however, some available free fonts servers that do support TrueType fonts. Some of these include:

xfsftA Truetype font server based on the Freetype Library.
Jörg Pomnitz' xfsft pagePage including linux bin of xfsft and some utils
Xfstt on sunsiteThe source package for Herbert Dürr's xfstt

>Font Resources & Utilities

Comp.fonts FAQEverythig you ever wanted to know about fonts.
Freefonts & SharefontsCollections of freeware and shareware fonts
Type1instA very useful utility that helps installing new Type 1 fonts. It produces a fonts.dir and a Fontmap for ghostscript. Get It!