## wxFont

A font is an object which determines the appearance of text. Fonts are used for drawing text to a device context, and setting the appearance of a window's text.

You can retrieve the current system font settings with wxSystemSettings.

wxSystemSettings

Derived from

wxGDIObject
wxObject

Include files

<wx/font.h>

Constants

The possible values for the family parameter of wxFont constructor are (the old names are for compatibility only):

    enum wxFontFamily
    {
        wxFONTFAMILY_DEFAULT = wxDEFAULT,
        wxFONTFAMILY_DECORATIVE = wxDECORATIVE,
        wxFONTFAMILY_ROMAN = wxROMAN,
        wxFONTFAMILY_SCRIPT = wxSCRIPT,
        wxFONTFAMILY_SWISS = wxSWISS,
        wxFONTFAMILY_MODERN = wxMODERN,
        wxFONTFAMILY_TELETYPE = wxTELETYPE,
        wxFONTFAMILY_MAX
    };

The possible values for the weight parameter are (the old names are for compatibility only):

    enum wxFontWeight
    {
        wxFONTWEIGHT_NORMAL = wxNORMAL,
        wxFONTWEIGHT_LIGHT = wxLIGHT,
        wxFONTWEIGHT_BOLD = wxBOLD,
        wxFONTWEIGHT_MAX
    };

The font flags which can be used during the font creation are:

    enum
    {
        // no special flags: font with default weight/slant/anti-aliasing
        wxFONTFLAG_DEFAULT          = 0,

        // slant flags (default: no slant)
        wxFONTFLAG_ITALIC           = 1 << 0,
        wxFONTFLAG_SLANT            = 1 << 1,

        // weight flags (default: medium)
        wxFONTFLAG_LIGHT            = 1 << 2,
        wxFONTFLAG_BOLD             = 1 << 3,

        // anti-aliasing flag: force on or off (default: the current system default)
        wxFONTFLAG_ANTIALIASED      = 1 << 4,
        wxFONTFLAG_NOT_ANTIALIASED  = 1 << 5,

        // underlined/strikethrough flags (default: no lines)
        wxFONTFLAG_UNDERLINED       = 1 << 6,
        wxFONTFLAG_STRIKETHROUGH    = 1 << 7,
    };

The known font encodings are:

    enum wxFontEncoding
    {
        wxFONTENCODING_SYSTEM = -1,     // system default
        wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT,         // current default encoding

        // ISO8859 standard defines a number of single-byte charsets
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_1,       // West European (Latin1)
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_2,       // Central and East European (Latin2)
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_3,       // Esperanto (Latin3)
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_4,       // Baltic (old) (Latin4)
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_5,       // Cyrillic
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_6,       // Arabic
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_7,       // Greek
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_8,       // Hebrew
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_9,       // Turkish (Latin5)
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_10,      // Variation of Latin4 (Latin6)
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_11,      // Thai
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_12,      // doesn't exist currently, but put it
                                        // here anyhow to make all ISO8859
                                        // consecutive numbers
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_13,      // Baltic (Latin7)
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_14,      // Latin8
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_15,      // Latin9 (a.k.a. Latin0, includes euro)
        wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_MAX,

        // Cyrillic charset soup (see http://czyborra.com/charsets/cyrillic.html)
        wxFONTENCODING_KOI8,            // we don't support any of KOI8 variants
        wxFONTENCODING_ALTERNATIVE,     // same as MS-DOS CP866
        wxFONTENCODING_BULGARIAN,       // used under Linux in Bulgaria

        // what would we do without Microsoft? They have their own encodings
            // for DOS
        wxFONTENCODING_CP437,           // original MS-DOS codepage
        wxFONTENCODING_CP850,           // CP437 merged with Latin1
        wxFONTENCODING_CP852,           // CP437 merged with Latin2
        wxFONTENCODING_CP855,           // another cyrillic encoding
        wxFONTENCODING_CP866,           // and another one
            // and for Windows
        wxFONTENCODING_CP874,           // WinThai
        wxFONTENCODING_CP1250,          // WinLatin2
        wxFONTENCODING_CP1251,          // WinCyrillic
        wxFONTENCODING_CP1252,          // WinLatin1
        wxFONTENCODING_CP1253,          // WinGreek (8859-7)
        wxFONTENCODING_CP1254,          // WinTurkish
        wxFONTENCODING_CP1255,          // WinHebrew
        wxFONTENCODING_CP1256,          // WinArabic
        wxFONTENCODING_CP1257,          // WinBaltic (same as Latin 7)
        wxFONTENCODING_CP12_MAX,

        wxFONTENCODING_UTF7,            // UTF-7 Unicode encoding
        wxFONTENCODING_UTF8,            // UTF-8 Unicode encoding

        wxFONTENCODING_UNICODE,         // Unicode - currently used only by
                                        // wxEncodingConverter class

        wxFONTENCODING_MAX
    };

Predefined objects

Objects:

wxNullFont

Pointers:

wxNORMAL_FONT
wxSMALL_FONT
wxITALIC_FONT
wxSWISS_FONT

See also

wxFont overview, wxDC::SetFont, wxDC::DrawText, wxDC::GetTextExtent, wxFontDialog, wxSystemSettings

Members

wxFont::wxFont
wxFont::~wxFont
wxFont::IsFixedWidth
wxFont::GetDefaultEncoding
wxFont::GetFaceName
wxFont::GetFamily
wxFont::GetNativeFontInfoDesc
wxFont::GetPointSize
wxFont::GetStyle
wxFont::GetUnderlined
wxFont::GetWeight
wxFont::New
wxFont::Ok
wxFont::SetDefaultEncoding
wxFont::SetFaceName
wxFont::SetFamily
wxFont::SetNativeFontInfo
wxFont::SetPointSize
wxFont::SetStyle
wxFont::SetUnderlined
wxFont::SetWeight
wxFont::operator =
wxFont::operator ==
wxFont::operator !=

### wxFont::wxFont

wxFont()

Default constructor.

wxFont(int pointSize, wxFontFamily family, int style, wxFontWeight weight, const bool underline = false, const wxString& faceName = "", wxFontEncoding encoding = wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

wxFont(int pixelSize, wxFontFamily family, int style, wxFontWeight weight, const bool underline = false, const wxString& faceName = "", wxFontEncoding encoding = wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

Creates a font object with the specified attributes.

Parameters

pointSize

Size in points.

pixelSize

Size in pixels: this is directly supported only under MSW currently where this constructor can be used directly, under other platforms a font with the closest size to the given one is found using binary search and the static New method must be used.

family

Font family, a generic way of referring to fonts without specifying actual facename. One of:

wxFONTFAMILY_DEFAULT | Chooses a default font.
wxFONTFAMILY_DECORATIVE | A decorative font.
wxFONTFAMILY_ROMAN | A formal, serif font.
wxFONTFAMILY_SCRIPT | A handwriting font.
wxFONTFAMILY_SWISS | A sans-serif font.
wxFONTFAMILY_MODERN | A fixed pitch font.
wxFONTFAMILY_TELETYPE | A teletype font.

style

One of wxFONTSTYLE_NORMAL, wxFONTSTYLE_SLANT and wxFONTSTYLE_ITALIC.

weight

Font weight, sometimes also referred to as font boldness. One of:

wxFONTWEIGHT_NORMAL | Normal font.
wxFONTWEIGHT_LIGHT | Light font.
wxFONTWEIGHT_BOLD | Bold font.

underline

The value can be true or false. At present this has an effect on Windows and Motif 2.x only.

faceName

An optional string specifying the actual typeface to be used. If it is an empty string, a default typeface will be chosen based on the family.

encoding

An encoding which may be one of

wxFONTENCODING_SYSTEM | Default system encoding.
wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT | Default application encoding: this is the encoding set by calls to SetDefaultEncoding and which may be set to, say, KOI8 to create all fonts by default with KOI8 encoding. Initially, the default application encoding is the same as default system encoding.
wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_1...15 | ISO8859 encodings.
wxFONTENCODING_KOI8 | The standard Russian encoding for Internet.
wxFONTENCODING_CP1250...1252 | Windows encodings similar to ISO8859 (but not identical).

If the specified encoding isn't available, no font is created (see also font encoding overview).

Remarks

If the desired font does not exist, the closest match will be chosen. Under Windows, only scalable TrueType fonts are used.

See also wxDC::SetFont, wxDC::DrawText and wxDC::GetTextExtent.

### wxFont::~wxFont

~wxFont()

Destructor.

Remarks

The destructor may not delete the underlying font object of the native windowing system, since wxFont uses a reference counting system for efficiency.

Although all remaining fonts are deleted when the application exits, the application should try to clean up all fonts itself. This is because wxWidgets cannot know if a pointer to the font object is stored in an application data structure, and there is a risk of double deletion.

### wxFont::IsFixedWidth

bool IsFixedWidth() const

Returns `true` if the font is a fixed width (or monospaced) font, `false` if it is a proportional one or font is invalid.

### wxFont::GetDefaultEncoding

static wxFontEncoding GetDefaultEncoding()

Returns the current application's default encoding.

See also

Font encoding overview, SetDefaultEncoding

### wxFont::GetFaceName

wxString GetFaceName() const

Returns the typeface name associated with the font, or the empty string if there is no typeface information.

See also

wxFont::SetFaceName

### wxFont::GetFamily

wxFontFamily GetFamily() const

Gets the font family. See wxFont::SetFamily for a list of valid family identifiers.

See also

wxFont::SetFamily

### wxFont::GetNativeFontInfoDesc

wxString GetNativeFontInfoDesc() const

Returns the platform-dependent string completely describing this font or an empty string if the font wasn't constructed using the native font description.

See also

wxFont::SetNativeFontInfo

### wxFont::GetPointSize

int GetPointSize() const

Gets the point size.

See also

wxFont::SetPointSize

### wxFont::GetStyle

int GetStyle() const

Gets the font style. See wxFont::wxFont for a list of valid styles.

See also

wxFont::SetStyle

### wxFont::GetUnderlined

bool GetUnderlined() const

Returns true if the font is underlined, false otherwise.

See also

wxFont::SetUnderlined

### wxFont::GetWeight

wxFontWeight GetWeight() const

Gets the font weight. See wxFont::wxFont for a list of valid weight identifiers.

See also

wxFont::SetWeight

### wxFont::New

static wxFont * New(int pointSize, wxFontFamily family, int style, wxFontWeight weight, const bool underline = false, const wxString& faceName = "", wxFontEncoding encoding = wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

static wxFont * New(int pointSize, wxFontFamily family, int flags = `wxFONTFLAG_DEFAULT`, const wxString& faceName = "", wxFontEncoding encoding = wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

static wxFont * New(const wxSize& pixelSize, wxFontFamily family, int style, wxFontWeight weight, const bool underline = false, const wxString& faceName = "", wxFontEncoding encoding = wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

static wxFont * New(const wxSize& pixelSize, wxFontFamily family, int flags = `wxFONTFLAG_DEFAULT`, const wxString& faceName = "", wxFontEncoding encoding = wxFONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

These functions take the same parameters as wxFont constructor and return a new font object allocated on the heap.

Using `New()` is currently the only way to directly create a font with the given size in pixels on platforms other than wxMSW.

### wxFont::Ok

bool Ok() const

Returns `true` if this object is a valid font, `false` otherwise.

### wxFont::SetDefaultEncoding

static void SetDefaultEncoding(wxFontEncoding encoding)

Sets the default font encoding.

See also

Font encoding overview, GetDefaultEncoding

### wxFont::SetFaceName

void SetFaceName(const wxString& faceName)

Sets the facename for the font.

Parameters

faceName

A valid facename, which should be on the end-user's system.

Remarks

To avoid portability problems, don't rely on a specific face, but specify the font family instead or as well. A suitable font will be found on the end-user's system. If both the family and the facename are specified, wxWidgets will first search for the specific face, and then for a font belonging to the same family.

See also

wxFont::GetFaceName, wxFont::SetFamily

### wxFont::SetFamily

void SetFamily(wxFontFamily family)

Sets the font family.

Parameters

family

One of:

wxFONTFAMILY_DEFAULT | Chooses a default font.
wxFONTFAMILY_DECORATIVE | A decorative font.
wxFONTFAMILY_ROMAN | A formal, serif font.
wxFONTFAMILY_SCRIPT | A handwriting font.
wxFONTFAMILY_SWISS | A sans-serif font.
wxFONTFAMILY_MODERN | A fixed pitch font.
wxFONTFAMILY_TELETYPE | A teletype font.

See also

wxFont::GetFamily, wxFont::SetFaceName

### wxFont::SetNativeFontInfo

void SetNativeFontInfo(const wxString& info)

Creates the font corresponding to the given native font description string which must have been previously returned by GetNativeFontInfoDesc. If the string is invalid, font is unchanged.

### wxFont::SetPointSize

void SetPointSize(int pointSize)

Sets the point size.

Parameters

pointSize

Size in points.

See also

wxFont::GetPointSize

### wxFont::SetStyle

void SetStyle(int style)

Sets the font style.

Parameters

style

One of wxFONTSTYLE_NORMAL, wxFONTSTYLE_SLANT and wxFONTSTYLE_ITALIC.

See also

wxFont::GetStyle

### wxFont::SetUnderlined

void SetUnderlined(const bool underlined)

Sets underlining.

Parameters

underlining

true to underline, false otherwise.

See also

wxFont::GetUnderlined

### wxFont::SetWeight

void SetWeight(wxFontWeight weight)

Sets the font weight.

Parameters

weight

One of:

wxFONTWEIGHT_NORMAL | Normal font.
wxFONTWEIGHT_LIGHT | Light font.
wxFONTWEIGHT_BOLD | Bold font.

See also

wxFont::GetWeight

### wxFont::operator =

wxFont& operator =(const wxFont& font)

Assignment operator, using reference counting. Returns a reference to 'this'.

### wxFont::operator ==

bool operator ==(const wxFont& font)

Equality operator. Two fonts are equal if they contain pointers to the same underlying font data. It does not compare each attribute, so two independently-created fonts using the same parameters will fail the test.

### wxFont::operator !=

bool operator !=(const wxFont& font)

Inequality operator. Two fonts are not equal if they contain pointers to different underlying font data. It does not compare each attribute.