I wasn't sure what you were talking about until I tried out the theme, leuven... and that was really fanciful and totally screwed the column-view without your fixed-width face fix.
In order to make it more flexible, instead of just set it once when org-faces.el is loaded, I think enforcing it every time when column-view is called is a better choice. Thus came the following little patch.
diff --git a/lisp/org-colview.el b/lisp/org-colview.el
index a98deec..f3b8e42 100644
--- a/lisp/org-colview.el
+++ b/lisp/org-colview.el
@@ -169,8 +169,10 @@ This is the compiled version of the format.")
(get-text-property (point-at-bol) 'face))
'default))
(color (list :foreground (face-attribute ref-face :foreground)))
- (face (list color 'org-column ref-face))
- (face1 (list color 'org-agenda-column-dateline ref-face))
+ (font (list :height (face-attribute 'default :height)
+ :family (face-attribute 'default :family)))
+ (face (list color font 'org-column ref-face))
+ (face1 (list color font 'org-agenda-column-dateline ref-face))
(cphr (get-text-property (point-at-bol) 'org-complex-heading-regexp))
pom property ass width f string ov column val modval s2 title calc)
;; Check if the entry is in another buffer.
diff --git a/lisp/org-faces.el b/lisp/org-faces.el
index 5472964..e968657 100644
--- a/lisp/org-faces.el
+++ b/lisp/org-faces.el
@@ -217,12 +217,6 @@ column view defines special faces for each outline level. See the file
"Face for column display of entry properties."
:group 'org-faces)
-(when (fboundp 'set-face-attribute)
- ;; Make sure that a fixed-width face is used when we have a column table.
- (set-face-attribute 'org-column nil
- :height (face-attribute 'default :height)
- :family (face-attribute 'default :family)))
-
(defface org-agenda-column-dateline
(org-compatible-face 'org-column
'((t nil)))
In this way, the column-view face will not be bound only to the font family and size at the time of loading org-faces.el, but anytime column-view is called. I'm not sure if I covered all the cases, but it seems to work well for me. I hope the patch is not broken by the mail app, but I guess it is simple enough to read it in one sip of coffee, though I tracked the issue and wrote the patch with one cup.
PS. I realized it was almost a month-old email. Org-mode is really good at remembering it for me.