then, how many people do have the adobe palatino's? None that I know of.
You know me. ;-) (Ok, I got them only at work.)
concerning the broken german ss: the polish font gurus (you'll meet them at the dante meeting) have made extended versions of those urw fonts, so maybe that will help. [the normal urw also don't have ogoneked glyphs]
I very hope that they did ask URW before -- AFAIK they aren't public domain or so but only freeware. And it would be a pity if they wouldn't allowed to spread their work.
Well, concerning the ss: Just install the Adobe Helvetica (free) and that's it (except for patching ConTeXt ;-)
Helvetica belongs to the standard PS fonts as Palatino does, but none of them is free! At Adobe the standard fonts are a bit less costly than other, but nevertheless to pay. Ok, there are several possibilities to get at least the standard 13 from an older Acrobat or so... Grüßlis vom Hraban! -- www.fiee.net/texnique/