The Xft library combines fontconfig [http://www.fontconfig.org], FreeType [http://www.freetype.org], and the X Render extension to provide anti-aliased fonts under X11.  Xft 2.0 is included in most recent Linux distributions (circa May 2003).  Mozilla, Qt, and GTk have all been updated to use Xft.

Experimental support for Xft in Tk 8.5 hase been committed to the CVS HEAD (31 May 2003).
See also patch #535541 [http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=535541&group_id=12997&atid=312997].
There are still (31 May 2003) a few quirks and bugs to be worked out, but overall it works pretty well.

To enable Xft support, run:

    sh ./configure --enable-xft
    make clean
    make

Many thanks to Keith Packard for contributing the original code.
Blame [Joe English] for the stuff that doesn't work right yet.