GNU Emacs 23.2.1 (x86_64-suse-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.22.1)
 of 2011-02-22 on build34

SuSE Linux 11.4
KDE 4

Now I think this is a side effect of me installing too many fonts on this box
but I cannot see how to get out of it.

The selection of characters by the cursor is no longer rectangular but seeks to
match the glyph forms. When I edit I get ghosts of previous characters sitting
on the screen until I do a page up page down to refresh the screen.

The latter is what makes emacs impossible to use as I cannot distinguish between
the ghost characters and the real ones and the cursor location is not obvious.

My other box with the same OS and architecture does not exhibit the problem.

I attach an image to make the point clear.

1 No matter how many fonts I install emacs should be able to cope.
2 No other applications seem to be affected this way on the box.

I have tried removing clearing my .emacs file and changing .fonts.config.

If I use the same emacs installation forwarding X output to another machine it
works fine.