Oops, forgot to add two further tidbits.

> When I use this, openoffice is utterly horrible, with many mis-placed
> glyphs, unreadable text.

Can't help with this -- I don't use OpenOffice much, but my fonts
have generally been fine.  In fact, people have asked me how I had
obtained good fonts using PowerPoint.

> xpdf renders are also very nasty.

I've had great success with xpdf, once I used my own xpdfrc.  Copy
the /usr/pkg/etc/xpdfrc to your local ~/.xpdfrc, remove the fontDirs,
and explicitly enable the displayFontT1 lines.

Unfortunately I find xpdf's rendering of graphics (e.g., gnuplot
graphs, or xfig graphics) to be less stellar. Ghostscript/gv with
antialiasing does a great job with graphics.  Unfortunately
ghostscript/gv's antialiased text doesn't compare to xpdf!

Brian.

-- 
  Brian de Alwis | Software Practices Lab | UBC | http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~bsd/
      "Amusement to an observing mind is study." - Benjamin Disraeli