Using fonts with older apps (ctwm, ical), and finding more fonts to use

Question

I am using various old/legacy tools, such as ctwm and ical, which appear to prefer the fonts -- specifically, the font names -- returned by xlsfonts, instead of fc-list. That is, if I specify a font name output by xlsfonts, like

 charter-bold-r-normal--0-0-0-0-p-0-adobe-standard

then ctwm and ical will use it. On the other hand, if I specify a font name output by fc-list, like

 Palladio

then those programs will ignore the specification and use a default font.

Unfortunately, the xlsfonts fonts are rather limited. For example, there is no "helvetica" font.

Note that I am working with a basic install of 12.04 (Precise Pangolin), with a number of application packages subsequently installed through apt-get. As far as I know, I am only using the font packages that come with that basic installation. Previously, I used 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) and had access to many more fonts (including Helvetica).

So, my questions are:

1. Can I use the fc-list fonts with these older packages? If so, how?
2. If I'm limited to just the xlsfonts fonts, then are there additional packages that I should install?
3. Am I missing something fundamental about these fonts and how they work? If so, what?

Thanks!

Bob