Hrmph -- I deleted the original thread, so can't reply :(
Whoever said the idea about splitting it up into two packages -- a svgatextmode (binary) and svgatextmode-fonts (for the problem fonts) had a good idea. In fact, I think I'll go ahead and go that route. Now comes part 2 -- are there any steps I need to take (wnpp or whatever) for the splitting of that package? *AND* -- how do I get dpkg-buildpackage to create 2 .debs out of a single source tree? -- The only ideas I can think of are really kludgy.