| 1 | \section{wxFont overview}\label{wxfontoverview} |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Class: \helpref{wxFont}{wxfont}, \helpref{wxFontDialog}{wxfontdialog} |
| 4 | |
| 5 | A font is an object which determines the appearance of text, primarily |
| 6 | when drawing text to a window or device context. A font is determined by |
| 7 | the following parameters (not all of them have to be specified, of course): |
| 8 | |
| 9 | \begin{twocollist}\itemsep=0pt |
| 10 | \twocolitem{Point size}{This is the standard way of referring to text size.} |
| 11 | \twocolitem{Family}{Supported families are: |
| 12 | {\bf wxDEFAULT, wxDECORATIVE, wxROMAN, wxSCRIPT, wxSWISS, wxMODERN}. |
| 13 | {\bf wxMODERN} is a fixed pitch font; the others are either fixed or variable pitch.} |
| 14 | \twocolitem{Style}{The value can be {\bf wxNORMAL, wxSLANT} or {\bf wxITALIC}.} |
| 15 | \twocolitem{Weight}{The value can be {\bf wxNORMAL, wxLIGHT} or {\bf wxBOLD}.} |
| 16 | \twocolitem{Underlining}{The value can be true or false.} |
| 17 | \twocolitem{Face name}{An optional string specifying the actual typeface to be used. If NULL, |
| 18 | a default typeface will chosen based on the family.} |
| 19 | \twocolitem{Encoding}{The font encoding (see {\bf wxFONTENCODING\_XXX} |
| 20 | constants and the \helpref{font overview}{wxfontencodingoverview} for more |
| 21 | details)} |
| 22 | \end{twocollist} |
| 23 | |
| 24 | Specifying a family, rather than a specific typeface name, ensures a degree of |
| 25 | portability across platforms because a suitable font will be chosen for the |
| 26 | given font family, however it doesn't allow to choose a font precisely as the |
| 27 | parameters above don't suffice, in general, to identify all the available fonts |
| 28 | and this is where using the native font descriptions may be helpful - see |
| 29 | below. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | Under Windows, the face name can be one of the installed fonts on the user's |
| 32 | system. Since the choice of fonts differs from system to system, either choose |
| 33 | standard Windows fonts, or if allowing the user to specify a face name, store |
| 34 | the family name with any file that might be transported to a different Windows |
| 35 | machine or other platform. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | \normalbox{{\bf Note:} There is currently a difference between the appearance |
| 38 | of fonts on the two platforms, if the mapping mode is anything other than |
| 39 | wxMM\_TEXT. Under X, font size is always specified in points. Under MS |
| 40 | Windows, the unit for text is points but the text is scaled according to the |
| 41 | current mapping mode. However, user scaling on a device context will also |
| 42 | scale fonts under both environments.} |
| 43 | |
| 44 | \subsection{Native font information}\label{nativefontinformation} |
| 45 | |
| 46 | An alternative way of choosing fonts is to use the native font description. |
| 47 | This is the only acceptable solution if the user is allowed to choose the font |
| 48 | using the \helpref{wxFontDialog}{wxfontdialog} because the selected font cannot |
| 49 | be described using only the family name and so, if only family name is stored |
| 50 | permanently, the user would almost surely see a different font in the program |
| 51 | later. |
| 52 | |
| 53 | Instead, you should store the value returned by |
| 54 | \helpref{wxFont::GetNativeFontInfoDesc}{wxfontgetnativefontinfodesc} and pass |
| 55 | it to \helpref{wxFont::SetNativeFontInfo}{wxfontsetnativefontinfo} later to |
| 56 | recreate exactly the same font. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | Note that the contents of this string depends on the platform and shouldn't be |
| 59 | used for any other purpose (in particular, it is not meant to be shown to the |
| 60 | user). Also please note that although the native font information is currently |
| 61 | implemented for Windows and Unix (GTK+ and Motif) ports only, all the methods |
| 62 | are available for all the ports and should be used to make your program work |
| 63 | correctly when they are implemented later. |
| 64 | |