Loading Fonts

A private font is the font which is available only to the application that explicitly loads it. The following functions can be used for SBCS fonts but not for MBCS raster fonts in DBCS OS/2.

• GpiLoadFonts

• GpiUnloadFonts

• GpiQueryFontFileDescriptions

As stated before, you query the system what fonts are available and find a font that best satisfies your requirement rather than assume the existence of some specific font.

As we already discussed in Available Fonts in DBCS PM, the MBCS raster fonts are provided by the font drivers that own the fonts. DBCS PM provides APIs (WinDBCSLoadFontDriver, WinDBCSUnloadFontDriver....) for application to load/unload a font driver. After the font driver is loaded, the fonts of this font driver will become the private fonts to the application program.

Note:

• The structure and format of the MBCS font driver is not publicized The MBCS font driver mechanism is changing and becoming close to SBCS font mechanism. For example, the MBCS outline font for version 1.2 was supported by font driver, but from late version of 1.3 and now up to the current version, MBCS outline fonts are supported in a same mechanism as SBCS font.

• In version 1.x, user can load MBCS fonts as well as SBCS fonts using the PM Control Panel. In version 2.x user can use the font driver object to load MBCS raster font drivers, and use the font palette object to load the SBCS fonts and the MBCS outline fonts.