Semi-OT: font advice

[jester@panix.com (Jesse Sheidlower)]

I recently got a new computer, and the monitor's resolution at
1400 x 1050 is such that the default font, which seems to be
"-adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-120-75-75-m-70-iso8859-1",
is too small to comfortably read. I am trying to find a font
that is better but am having trouble working with the fonts,
and would appreciate some advice.

The fonts I can choose from Shift-Mouse-1 are generally either
too small to be comfortably legible, or too large to fit happily
in a window. For example the "9x15" font, which is 
"-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--15-140-75-75-C-90-ISO8859-1", is a 
good shape but too large for seeing good chunks of programs. I
very much like the shape of the "fixed" font, which is
"-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-SemiCondensed--13-120-75-75-C-60-ISO8859-1",
but it's way too small, yet I don't seem to have a larger version
of this available.

The font I have in my terminal window isn't bad, but I don't know
what it is in terms of the "-*-*-" form--I'm running Gnome, and
it's chosen from a menu as being in the "Monospace" family, regular,
11 pt.

I guess my biggest problem is that I don't know how to browse the
fonts on my system from within Emacs in a way that shows me what
they really look like and what their formal names are. I've read
through the Wiki and other places and don't really know what to
try next. Any advice, either for a specific font or for ways to
better browse what I have? I'm happy to install any fonts on my
system.

Another thing is that when I do specify a font in my .emacs with
something like

(set-face-font 'default "-Misc-Fixed-Medium-R-Normal--15-140-75-75-C-90-ISO8859-1")

I then can't run Emacs in a terminal window (i.e. starting up
with "emacs -nw")--I get a error "Error in init file: error:
"X windows are not in use or not initialized"". Assuming I do
eventually find a nice font, how do I use it in X without 
screwing up my non-X sessions?

Thanks very much. I'm running GNU Emacs 21.3.1, if that matters.

Jesse Sheidlower