Well - font rendering in gnome-print is making heartwarming success last days. RGB and RGBA were actually breeze - but Gdk one was bitch (and still is) - but working. Now I have to think and think and think about device independent glyphists - until something will evolve. And then we'll have it!
Still waiting for my Red Book, before being able to move gnome-print to unicode - once and forever, I hope. And then I simply have to jump back to sodipodi, to make it using all that brave new stuff.
X sucks, PostScript sucks, PDF sucks, as do many other things. But only wait! We are here to embrace and extend all 'em!