UPDATE
i seem to have solved my own problem.
when i was checking setting, i noticed that the FB Folder setting was wrong/old and did not actually exist (so i do not know how ANY fonts displayed, and it was not complaining about this)
but when i corrected to the correct dir on C:, it said it added a few fonts, BUT when i went back to the font list display, ALL the fonts were now displaying.
Hello @dec, sorry for the delay and thank you for your investigation:)
This is brilliant!
Indeed, if FontBase has troubles locating the font file it will not be able to display the preview text properly.
Thank you again,
Yuriy
FontBase Dev Team