Getting Pango To Select A Particular Font?

[PagCal <pagcal runbox com>]

I'm getting closer, closer, closer - to my goal of getting pango to 
select a particular font.

It seems:

1. Pango requires fonts to be in /usr/share/fonts, as well as in 
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts. If you don't, the font won't come up.

Why is this so?

2. /etc/fonts/fonts.conf is read in either by libXft2 or Pango, and then 
when you tell pango to select say 'Sans 18', it uses these rules to 
select the closest font.

Is is pango or libxft2 that executes the rules in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf?

3. Why, when I put a large iso10646 font into /usr/share/fonts, does 
pango take about 30 seconds to start?

Does pango open any of the font files themselves?

----

As for mods to pango, I'm planning at least one. When I 'beg' it for a 
font, say 'Sans 18', I'm going to pass in instead the tried and true X11 
font declaration, say

'-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--12-110-75-75-c-60-iso10646-1'

and force the selection engine to select that particular one.

Any comments or questions here?