[Qt-interest] Twitching Dialog layout

[BRM]

I have a layout that has essentially three columns of widgets, with the center column containing text that changes during the run of the program based on events.
The text updates on a very regular basis (at least 1/second if not more). This update is causing the layout to occasionally adjust, giving it a heartbeat effect - or twitch.
This twitching behavior is undesirable, and it was suggested that I use a fixed-width font.

In searching through the settings QLabels (which is what is being used), QWidgets, etc. I am hard pressed to find any way to specify a fixed font aside from directly specifying a specific font, which is a bit undesirable as well since I am trying to support multiple platforms (e.g. Linux, Windows).

Is there an easy, proper, and portable way to do this?

TIA,

Ben