thanks to Takeshi there's a new freetype-plan9.tgz (and ttf2subf) on ucalgary:
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~mirtchov/p9/freetype/freetype-plan9.tgz
it fixes an underflow which caused some characters to be drawn outside of the clipping rectangle (i.e. the glyphs appeared to be missing in the final fonts).
regenerate your fonts from TTFs if you think you may be a victim :)
andrey
