>> By the way, I did not realize that the docstring of 
>> 'set-face-attribute' says nothing about the evaluation order of its 
>> arguments.  I suggest the attached patch.
>
> Are we sure that having order-dependent behavior is a good idea?
>

I did not design that function, that's how it works.  But given how 
intricate the face machinery is, I'm not sure it's possible to do much 
better.

>
> Since all args are available at the time of evaluation, wouldn't it be 
> better to handle :font and/or :family before all the others?
>

You may have seen in the attached patch that :family is indeed handled 
before all other attributes, but not :font.

Can you please confirm that the recipes you sent are working as expected 
when you place the :font attribute before all other attributes?