The Pango backend written for Win32 is pangowin32. Pangowin32 uses the Win32 GDI font API. GTK+ on Win32 uses the pangowin32 backend. The pangoft2 backend was originally written with Win32 in mind, but its main use nowadays is on other platforms than Win32. There are two supported ways to build Pango for Win32: 1) Use autoconfiscation. I.e., aclocal, automake, autoconf and configure to build makefiles etc. The generated makefiles use libtool and gcc (mingw) to do the compilation. This is what tml@iki.fi uses. 2) Use MSVC and nmake. Use the makefile.msc makefiles. These makefiles are supported by Hans Breuer.