changing GNU Emacs fonts in KDE 2

[Faheem Mitha <faheem@email.unc.edu>]

Dear People,

Judging from old posts on Google, the correct way is to change fonts
on an application is to put your preference in the .Xresources file,
ie. something like

Emacs.font:  -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-m-*-iso8859-1

However, for me this is ignored by emacs when it starts ups, though it
works fine if I do

emacs --font -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--12-*-*-*-m-*-iso8859-1

I have a feeling this may have something to do with KDE2, which is
what I use. Is it possible KDE2 is overriding my X resources, and if
so is there a way to turn it off? There appears to be a file
/usr/share/apps/kdisplay/app-defaults/Emacs.ad which looks like it has
something to do with X resources. Does anyone recommend fiddling with
this? Or any other suggestions? I'd like a non-window-manager specific
solution.

Note I found (and unchecked) the checkbox in the KDE Control Center
which is under Look and Feel/Style and says "Apply fonts and colors to
non-KDE applications", but this doesn't seem to make any difference.

I'm currently tracking Sarge, and there is nothing else that seems
worthy of note about my setup.
                                                       Faheem.