RHL8.0 contained a patch to Xft to add a rh_prefer_bitmaps setting in fonts.conf. The patch to implement support for this in Xft appears to be have been lost when Xft got integrated into XFree86. FWIW, the patch was Xft-1.9.1.020811.1151-embeddedbitmap.patch.
Fixed in XFree86-4.2.99.3-20021230.6 and later in rawhide. Another missing patch was also applied (slighthint) and a bit of love given to fontconfig as well. Thanks.