how to get the width(in pixels) of a font

[Chandra Shekar Sengupta <sengupta tataelxsi co in>]

hi
  i am using GtkLabel for displaying some text where i have set font family
and font size. Before displaying the label, i want to set the width of the
label depending on the characters present int the text. I want to determine
the width(in pixels) of each character present in the text and add them to
get the width of the string.

My code is given bellow:

PangoFontDescription* font;
GtkWidget* label;
char* text;
int width;

font = pango_font_description_from_string("Arial 24");
if( NULL != font)
        {
                pango_font_description_set_weight(font,PANGO_WEIGHT_BOLD);
        }
gtk_widget_modify_font(label,font);
strcpy(text,"abcijk");
gtk_label_set_text (label,text);
width= function_for_determining_width_of_text_in_pixels(text);
gtk_widget_set_size_request(label,width,20);

i want to know how to get the width of a character of a certain font family
and font size,so that i can implement the
function_for_determining_width_of_text_in_pixels();

Thanks in Advance.

Regards,
Chandra Shekhar Sengupta.