rc file parsing help needed

[Jack <ostroffjh sbcglobal net>]

I'd be happy to be pointed to the appropriate "fine manual" to read, 
but I haven't found anything yet that helps.

The problem showed up running Balsa on a non-Gnome system.  Many of the 
icons don't show up, and "could not load image: Icon 'balsa_mbox_out' 
not present in theme" shows up as the error message.  We figured out it 
was probably some "missing" part of gnome that normally got this 
resolved.  In fact, running the gnome-control-center and selecting a 
theme does fix the problem until a restart of X.

After lots of hunting, the Balsa team (thanks, guys) figured out the 
easiest fix was just to create ~/.gtkrc-2.0 with the single line 'gtk-
icon-theme-name = "gnome"' although I have since figured out that 'gtk-
fallback-icon-theme = "gnome"' also works.

In looking for a more "automatic" solution, we figured that calling 
gtk_rc_parse_string with one of the above strings should have the same 
effect.  Unfortunately, we have tried several variations, all with no 
apparent effect.  I have even tried renaming ~/.gtkrc-2.0 to another 
name so it is not automatically recognized, and then calling 
gtk_rc_parse("new file name") but again - no effect.

Is there something obvious we might be missing?  Is there something 
particular about when during app startup the parse function needs to be 
called to have an effect?

Any other hints or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Jack