Using Fonts

In Windows CE, fonts are grouped into families that share common stroke width characteristics. Fonts within a family are distinguished by size and style. The following table shows the font families.

These family names correspond to constants found in the Wingdi.h header file: FF_DECORATIVE, FF_DONTCARE, FF_MODERN, FF_ROMAN, FF_SCRIPT, and FF_SWISS. Use these constants to create, select, or retrieve font information.

For information about how fonts are represented and stored, see Working with TrueType and Raster Fonts.

Enabling Font Linking

Windows CE provides font linking capability, making it possible to link one or more fonts, called linked fonts, to another font, called the base font. Once you link fonts, you can use the base font to display code points that do not exist in the base font, but do exist in one of the linked fonts. For example, linking a Hangeul font and a Japanese font to a Latin font gives you the ability to display both Korean and Japanese characters in the Latin font using the Unicode text API.

Note   Font linking can only add glyphs to a base font; you cannot override or replace glyphs in the base font.

If font linking is enabled on your device, you can examine the registry by enumerating the subkeys of the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\FontLink\SystemLink to determine the mappings of linked fonts to base fonts. You can add additional links by creating additional subkeys. The following code shows how to add an additional link.

base font face name = path and file to link to, face name of the font to link

Creating End User Defined Characters

Although Windows CE defines thousands of characters, you can define your own set of characters. Use an end user defined character (EUDC) when you need to define a character or glyph for a device. Always associate an EUDC with a double-byte character set (DBCS) and a TrueType font. When you create an EUDC, choose a reserved DCBS value. Applications use DBCS values to identify the EUDC. Windows CE uses DBCS values to locate the shape and style information in the corresponding TrueType font. The shape and style information specifies how to draw the EUDC.

To create an EUDC

1. Choose a character value in the specified range or ranges of reserved characters.
2. Use an EUDC editor to create the shape and style of the character.
3. Add the shape and style information to the TrueType font in the entry that corresponds to the selected character value.

To associate an EUDC font with another font

1. Copy the EUDC font to a folder.

   The EUDC font has a .tte extension.

2. Call EnableEUDC (FALSE).

3. Modify the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\EUDC registry key.

4. Create a subkey under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\EUDC.

5. In the subkey that you created in step 4, enter the font path that contains the EUDCs.

   For example, type the following code in the subkey to link the Tahoma font with the test03.tte font located in the Windows directory.

   Tahoma=\windows\test03.tte
   

6. Call EnableEUDC (TRUE).

   Note   Before creating EUDC entries in the registry, enumerate the existing EUDC settings to ensure that you do not overwrite entries defined for the Windows CE–based device.

Working with Fonts

Your platform can contain a number of fonts. To learn how to determine what fonts are available on your system, see Enumerating Fonts. For information about loading a font from a resource file, see Installing and Using Fonts.

Windows CE provides six standard logical fonts. You can use the GetStockObject function to obtain a standard font. The following table shows the standard font values.

See Also

Fonts

Last updated on Wednesday, April 13, 2005

© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.