recent emacs font problems?

[Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp>]

Has anyone noticed problems recently with changing emacs' default font?

I find that I can change the default font emacs uses with the `-font'
option, but changing from within emacs (either via `set-default-font' or
the S-mouse-1 menu) has no effect -- or rather, emacs continues to
_display_ characters using the old font, but apparently changes the
default character cell size to use the new font (e.g., the tab-width
gets changed, and the window gets resized -- since the characters are
still displayed in the old font, this means that both tabs and
window-size calculations are now wrong)!

I use the GTK toolkit.

I'm not entirely sure that this is an emacs problem (rather than an X
font problem, or a GTK problem), but other X/GTK apps seem OK, so
currently I'm assuming it's emacs.

Thanks,

-Miles
-- 
`Cars give people wonderful freedom and increase their opportunities.
 But they also destroy the environment, to an extent so drastic that
 they kill all social life' (from _A Pattern Language_)