Understanding themes

[Surya Kiran Gullapalli <skg fluent co in>]

Hi all,
I'm trying to understand the working of themes and the resource files.

I've a small application and before running the application, i'm setting 
the gtkrc file using the environment variable GTK2_RC_FILES, so that my 
application uses my gtkrc file instead of using it from theme.

what ever settings i made in the gtkrc file are getting reflected in the 
application, but the application font is behaving in a different manner.

I've set the application font like this in gtkrc file

gtk-font-name = "Courier 8"

If no theme is running, (i.e. say i'm working in KDE), application font 
has been set properly, from the gtkrc file. But if some gtk-theme is 
running say clearlooks or something else, the application is picking up 
the font from gnome settings. Is this predictable behaviour?

When any gtk-theme is running, my application is not picking up the 
gtkrc file i've specified.

Now my question is,
how can i tell my application to pick up the gtkrc file, even if some 
theme is running?

Also, If i want my application to use a font, which is not cached using 
fontconfig, where should i put the font, and how do i tell my 
application to pick up the font.

I want these things to work in both linux and windows.

Thanks in advance,
Surya