Visual C++ and MFC Programming 2nd Edition

Visual C++ and MFC Fundamentals Chapter 8 GDI Orientation and Transformations

7.4 Fonts...............................................................................................................

7.4.1 Introduction...........................................................................................

A font is a list of symbols that can be drawn on a device context to produce a message. A

font is designed by an artist but usually follows a specific pattern. For example a font

designed to produce symbols readable in the English language must be designed by a set

of predetermined and agreed upon symbols. These English symbols are grouped in an

entity called the English alphabet. When designing such a font, the symbols created must

conform to that language. This also implies that one font can be significantly different

from another and a font is not necessarily a series of readable symbols.

Just like everything else in the computer, a font must have a name. To accommodate the

visual needs, a font is designed to assume different sizes.

7.4.2 Font Selection.......................................................................................

Before using a font to draw text in a device, the font must have been installed. Microsoft

Windows installs many fonts during setup. To handle its various assignments, the

operating system uses a particular font known as the System Font. This is the font used to

display the menu items and other labels for resources in applications. If you want to use a

different font to draw text in your application, you must select it.

Selecting a font, as well as selecting any other GDI object we will use from now on, is

equivalent to specifying the characteristics of a GDI object you want to use. To do this,

you must first create the object, unless it exists already. To select an object, pass it as a

pointer to the CDC::SelectObject() method. For example, to select a font, the syntax you

would use is:

virtual CFont* SelectObject(CFont* pFont);

This method takes as argument the font you want to use, pFont. It returns a pointer to the

font that was previously selected. If there was a problem when selecting the font, the

method returns NULL. As you can see, you must first have a font you want to select.

7.4.3 Font Creation........................................................................................

A font is created as a variable of the CFont class (of course, you can also use the Win32

API's HFONT class). The CFont class is based on CGdiObject. To declare a CFont

variable, you can use the default constructor of this class. This can be easily done as

follows:

CFont NewFont;

After declaring a CFont variable, you must initialize it. This can be done by calling one

of the Create member functions. The easiest technique of creating a font is done with the

CreatePointFont() method. Its syntax is:

BOOL CreatePointFont(int nPointSize, LPCTSTR lpszFaceName, CDC* pDC =

NULL);

The nPointSize is the height of the font. It is supplied as a multiple of 1/10.