Comment 7 for bug 8077

It happened to me twice in a row now, so it's definitely very common. Logging
out and in again does fix the problem, I'll try to find out what might be
triggering it.
This is also a more general problem, because I also couldn't change my font size
(application font and window title font didn't work, desktop font worked,
haven't tried terminal font) or theme. The key was always changed in the gconf
database (I checked with gconf-editor), but no application picked it up, not
even if I restarted it.

So, keys which don't work (when the bug is triggered) are:
/apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces
/apps/metacity/general/titlebar_font
/desktop/gnome/interface/font_name
/desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme (and other theme settings)

Keys which are confirmed to still work are:
/apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_font

I will do more testing if it happens again.
This probably doesn't help much, but this bug should not be underestimated IMO.