Understanding themes

["Surya Kiran Gullapalli" <suryakiran gullapalli gmail com>]

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?

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