I use a variety of old, bitmap-only TrueType fonts in my site design work.
(Sadly, they seem to have no modern equivalents.) I've recently upgraded my
X version to a 4.3 prerelease that implements Xft2, then rebuilt GTK+ and
Pango with the requisite support, ran ttmkfdir/mkfontdir/fc-cache where
needed, etc..

 So anyway, attempting to view/use one of the aforementioned fonts(Through
preview, text tool or otherwise) returns the following console error in GIMP:

** (gimp-1.3:27103): WARNING **: Unable to load unicode charmap from font
file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/[fontfilename.ttf]
** (gimp-1.3:27103): WARNING **: Unable to open font file
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/[fontfilename.ttf] for font [fontname]
[size], falling back to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/UTRG____.pfa

 -Then does what it says-Falls back to displaying the font instead. This
does not occur under any other GTK+2/Pango/Xft2-using app, and with the
help of Alistair Strachan I had found it to be a GIMP-specific issue
localized to the Pango backend.

 From what Alistair's told me, Pango itself has fallback behavior when
dealing with fonts without a unicode character set, dropping to bitmap mode
instead; GIMP currently doesn't use this behavior, instead choosing not to
show the font at all. I have no idea whether support for bitmap fallback is
on the timetable for 1.3, hence the filing of this bug.

 Needless to say, not being able to use half my font collection is a major
loss to my work. >SiGh<

 (Note: I'd provide a sample font, but I'm not sure of the license that
these fonts are under, so I'd have to check their relevant documentation
before posting-Which isn't on hand at the moment. |\ I'll have to get back
to you on that...)