Many thanks to Wayne for the hint on spadmin.
On investigating it, in spadmin, in the printer tab, it turns out that font substitution had been turned on, and it was referrring to fonts that the printer did not have. Consequently what must have been happening is that instead of using the fonts on the computer, the printer tried to use fonts it did not have, and defaulted to this strange spidery computerish font.
Why it happened, no idea. I certainly had never enabled any of these substitutions. spadmin may have a mind of its own which gets triggered when you install OO2. At any rate, delete all the font substitutions and the computer fonts are used and work perfectly.
In hope this may someday rescue someone else from a couple of days scratching their heads,
Peter