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class SF::Font
inherits Reference #

Class for loading and manipulating character fonts

Fonts can be loaded from a file, from memory or from a custom stream, and supports the most common types of fonts. See the load_from_file function for the complete list of supported formats.

Once it is loaded, a SF::Font instance provides three types of information about the font:

  • Global metrics, such as the line spacing
  • Per-glyph metrics, such as bounding box or kerning
  • Pixel representation of glyphs

Fonts alone are not very useful: they hold the font data but cannot make anything useful of it. To do so you need to use the SF::Text class, which is able to properly output text with several options such as character size, style, color, position, rotation, etc. This separation allows more flexibility and better performances: indeed a SF::Font is a heavy resource, and any operation on it is slow (often too slow for real-time applications). On the other side, a SF::Text is a lightweight object which can combine the glyphs data and metrics of a SF::Font to display any text on a render target. Note that it is also possible to bind several SF::Text instances to the same SF::Font.

It is important to note that the SF::Text instance doesn't copy the font that it uses, it only keeps a reference to it. Thus, a SF::Font must not be destructed while it is used by a SF::Text (i.e. never write a function that uses a local SF::Font instance for creating a text).

Usage example:

# Load a new font from file
font = SF::Font.from_file("arial.ttf")

# Create a text which uses our font
text1 = SF::Text.new("text", font, 30)

# Create another text using the same font, but with different parameters
text2 = SF::Text.new
text2.font = font
text2.character_size = 50
text2.style = SF::Text::Italic

Apart from loading font files, and passing them to instances of SF::Text, you should normally not have to deal directly with this class. However, it may be useful to access the font metrics or rasterized glyphs for advanced usage.

Note that if the font is a bitmap font, it is not scalable, thus not all requested sizes will be available to use. This needs to be taken into consideration when using SF::Text. If you need to display text of a certain size, make sure the corresponding bitmap font that supports that size is used.

See also: SF::Text

Constructors#

.from_file(*args, **kwargs) : self#

Shorthand for font = Font.new; font.load_from_file(...); font

Raises InitError on failure

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.from_memory(*args, **kwargs) : self#

Shorthand for font = Font.new; font.load_from_memory(...); font

Raises InitError on failure

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.from_stream(*args, **kwargs) : self#

Shorthand for font = Font.new; font.load_from_stream(...); font

Raises InitError on failure

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.new#

Default constructor

This constructor defines an empty font

View source

Methods#

#dup : Font#

Returns a shallow copy of this object.

This allocates a new object and copies the contents of self into it.

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#finalize#

Destructor

Cleans up all the internal resources used by the font

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#get_glyph(code_point : Int, character_size : Int, bold : Bool, outline_thickness : Number = 0) : Glyph#

Retrieve a glyph of the font

If the font is a bitmap font, not all character sizes might be available. If the glyph is not available at the requested size, an empty glyph is returned.

You may want to use \ref glyph? to determine if the glyph exists before requesting it. If the glyph does not exist, a font specific default is returned.

Be aware that using a negative value for the outline thickness will cause distorted rendering.

  • code_point - Unicode code point of the character to get
  • character_size - Reference character size
  • bold - Retrieve the bold version or the regular one?
  • outline_thickness - Thickness of outline (when != 0 the glyph will not be filled)

Returns: The glyph corresponding to code_point and character_size

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#get_kerning(first : Int, second : Int, character_size : Int, bold : Bool = false) : Float32#

Get the kerning offset of two glyphs

The kerning is an extra offset (negative) to apply between two glyphs when rendering them, to make the pair look more "natural". For example, the pair "AV" have a special kerning to make them closer than other characters. Most of the glyphs pairs have a kerning offset of zero, though.

  • first - Unicode code point of the first character
  • second - Unicode code point of the second character
  • character_size - Reference character size

Returns: Kerning value for first and second, in pixels

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#get_line_spacing(character_size : Int) : Float32#

Get the line spacing

Line spacing is the vertical offset to apply between two consecutive lines of text.

  • character_size - Reference character size

Returns: Line spacing, in pixels

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#get_texture(character_size : Int) : Texture#

Retrieve the texture containing the loaded glyphs of a certain size

The contents of the returned texture changes as more glyphs are requested, thus it is not very relevant. It is mainly used internally by SF::Text.

  • character_size - Reference character size

Returns: Texture containing the glyphs of the requested size

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#get_underline_position(character_size : Int) : Float32#

Get the position of the underline

Underline position is the vertical offset to apply between the baseline and the underline.

  • character_size - Reference character size

Returns: Underline position, in pixels

See also: underline_thickness

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#get_underline_thickness(character_size : Int) : Float32#

Get the thickness of the underline

Underline thickness is the vertical size of the underline.

  • character_size - Reference character size

Returns: Underline thickness, in pixels

See also: underline_position

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#glyph?(code_point : Int) : Bool#

Determine if this font has a glyph representing the requested code point

Most fonts only include a very limited selection of glyphs from specific Unicode subsets, like Latin, Cyrillic, or Asian characters.

While code points without representation will return a font specific default character, it might be useful to verify whether specific code points are included to determine whether a font is suited to display text in a specific language.

  • code_point - Unicode code point to check

Returns: True if the codepoint has a glyph representation, false otherwise

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#info : Font::Info#

Get the font information

Returns: A structure that holds the font information

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#load_from_file(filename : String) : Bool#

Load the font from a file

The supported font formats are: TrueType, Type 1, CFF, OpenType, SFNT, X11 PCF, Windows FNT, BDF, PFR and Type 42. Note that this function knows nothing about the standard fonts installed on the user's system, thus you can't load them directly.

Warning

SFML cannot preload all the font data in this function, so the file has to remain accessible until the SF::Font object loads a new font or is destroyed.

  • filename - Path of the font file to load

Returns: True if loading succeeded, false if it failed

See also: load_from_memory, load_from_stream

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#load_from_memory(data : Slice) : Bool#

Load the font from a file in memory

The supported font formats are: TrueType, Type 1, CFF, OpenType, SFNT, X11 PCF, Windows FNT, BDF, PFR and Type 42.

Warning

SFML cannot preload all the font data in this function, so the buffer pointed by data has to remain valid until the SF::Font object loads a new font or is destroyed.

  • data - Slice containing the file data in memory

Returns: True if loading succeeded, false if it failed

See also: load_from_file, load_from_stream

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#load_from_stream(stream : InputStream) : Bool#

Load the font from a custom stream

The supported font formats are: TrueType, Type 1, CFF, OpenType, SFNT, X11 PCF, Windows FNT, BDF, PFR and Type 42.

Warning

SFML cannot preload all the font data in this function, so the contents of stream have to remain valid as long as the font is used.

Warning

SFML cannot preload all the font data in this function, so the stream has to remain accessible until the SF::Font object loads a new font or is destroyed.

  • stream - Source stream to read from

Returns: True if loading succeeded, false if it failed

See also: load_from_file, load_from_memory

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#smooth=(smooth : Bool)#

Enable or disable the smooth filter

When the filter is activated, the font appears smoother so that pixels are less noticeable. However if you want the font to look exactly the same as its source file, you should disable it. The smooth filter is enabled by default.

  • smooth - True to enable smoothing, false to disable it

See also: smooth?

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#smooth? : Bool#

Tell whether the smooth filter is enabled or not

Returns: True if smoothing is enabled, false if it is disabled

See also: smooth=

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