> some of the fonts are not installed tho, if they are they are in
> compressed form (because of the low disk space problem)

Compressed by what?  gzip?  It seems that compressed font support is
in the X server, but I don't believe it supports the .gz format.
You should have them compressed by 'compress' in .Z files.

> the fonts.dir and fonts.alias are the proper files, so that should
> not be a problem

Without seeing the contents of your font directories and
font.{dir,alias} files, I'm not sure enough to say that.  I tend to
believe that your font.dir file must have the exact file name for
the fonts; i.e. if a font file is compressed, font.dir must refer to
it as 7x14.pcf.Z for instance.

> here is where the problem occurs
> 1- i start Xwindows via startx

Hey, it's not Xwindows.  Just try "man X" if you have doubts ;-)

ken