Handling fonts in Microsoft Windows-based applications can involve a lot of grunt work. For example, essential tasks such as creating fonts, retrieving point sizes, and calculating text metrics can take up a lot of the developer's time and effort. This article describes some useful font-handling functions that take care of most of this tedious work, thus making it easier to create and manipulate fonts in Windows.

The FONTUTIL sample application demonstrates most of the font-handling functions discussed in this technical article. FONTUTIL contains useful font-handling routines that make it easier for an application to create and manipulate fonts in Microsoft Windows by taking care of most of the tedious work.

The font utilities are primarily for applications that need the relatively simplistic font model presented in the ChooseFont common dialog box. ChooseFont() deals with fonts using four primary variables: typeface name, typeface style, point size, and effects. ChooseFont also allows for color selection, but the font-handling functions do not currently support this feature.

The font-handling functions allow an application to create and interrogate fonts in a manner that is consistent with the ChooseFont model. For example, you can create a font by using the ReallyCreateFont() function and specifying the typeface name, typeface style, and point size; you can retrieve the typeface style of a font by using the GetTextStyle() function; and so on.

The font utility functions support Microsoft Windows versions 3.0 and 3.1, and Windows NT version 3.1. You can include the functions either in an application or in a Dynamic-Link Library (DLL).

The following files are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:


Fontutil.exe (http://download.microsoft.com/download/platformsdk/sample34/3.1/w31/en-us/fontutil.exe)

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