Custom .ttf fonts to use in C# windows.Form

Question

How do I use a custom .tff font file I have with my current windows.forms application? I read some where that I use it as an embedded resource, but how do I set it the System.Drawing.Font type?

Answer 1

This article: How to embed a true type font shows how to do what you ask in .NET.

How to embed a True Type font

Some applications, for reasons of esthetics or a required visual style, will embed certain uncommon fonts so that they are always there when needed regardless of whether the font is actually installed on the destination system.

The secret to this is twofold. First the font needs to be placed in the resources by adding it to the solution and marking it as an embedded resource. Secondly, at runtime, the font is loaded via a stream and stored in a PrivateFontCollection object for later use.

This example uses a font which is unlikely to be installed on your system. Alpha Dance is a free True Type font that is available from the Free Fonts Collection. This font was embedded into the application by adding it to the solution and selecting the "embedded resource" build action in the properties.

Once the file has been successfully included in the resources you need to provide a PrivateFontCollection object in which to store it and a method by which it's loaded into the collection. The best place to do this is probably the form load override or event handler. The following listing shows the process. Note how the AddMemoryFont method is used. It requires a pointer to the memory in which the font is saved as an array of bytes. In C# we can use the unsafe keyword for convienience but VB must use the capabilities of the Marshal classes unmanaged memory handling. The latter option is of course open to C# programmers who just don't like the unsafe keyword. PrivateFontCollection pfc = new PrivateFontCollection();

private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
  Stream fontStream = this.GetType().Assembly.GetManifestResourceStream("embedfont.Alphd___.ttf");

  byte[] fontdata = new byte[fontStream.Length];
  fontStream.Read(fontdata,0,(int)fontStream.Length);
  fontStream.Close();
  unsafe
  {
    fixed(byte * pFontData = fontdata)
    {
      pfc.AddMemoryFont((System.IntPtr)pFontData,fontdata.Length);
    }
  }
}

Fonts may have only certain styles which are available and unfortunately, selecting a font style that doesn't exist will throw an exception. To overcome this the font can be interrogated to see which styles are available and only those provided by the font can be used. The following listing demonstrates how the Alpha Dance font is used by checking the available font styles and showing all those that exist. Note that the underline and strikethrough styles are pseudo styles constructed by the font rendering engine and are not actually provided in glyph form.

private void Form1_Paint(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs e)
{
  bool bold=false;
  bool regular=false;
  bool italic=false;

  e.Graphics.PageUnit=GraphicsUnit.Point;
  SolidBrush b = new SolidBrush(Color.Black);

  float y=5;

  System.Drawing.Font fn;

  foreach(FontFamily ff in pfc.Families)
  {
    if(ff.IsStyleAvailable(FontStyle.Regular))
    {
      regular=true;
      fn=new Font(ff,18,FontStyle.Regular);
      e.Graphics.DrawString(fn.Name,fn,b,5,y,StringFormat.GenericTypographic);
      fn.Dispose();
      y+=20;
    }
    if(ff.IsStyleAvailable(FontStyle.Bold))
    {
      bold=true;
      fn=new Font(ff,18,FontStyle.Bold);
      e.Graphics.DrawString(fn.Name,fn,b,5,y,StringFormat.GenericTypographic);
      fn.Dispose();
      y+=20;
    }
    if(ff.IsStyleAvailable(FontStyle.Italic))
    {
      italic=true;
      fn=new Font(ff,18,FontStyle.Italic);
      e.Graphics.DrawString(fn.Name,fn,b,5,y,StringFormat.GenericTypographic);
      fn.Dispose();
      y+=20;
    }
    if(bold  && italic)
    {
      fn=new Font(ff,18,FontStyle.Bold | FontStyle.Italic);
      e.Graphics.DrawString(fn.Name,fn,b,5,y,StringFormat.GenericTypographic);
      fn.Dispose();
      y+=20;
    }
    fn=new Font(ff,18,FontStyle.Underline);
    e.Graphics.DrawString(fn.Name,fn,b,5,y,StringFormat.GenericTypographic);
    fn.Dispose();
    y+=20;
    fn=new Font(ff,18,FontStyle.Strikeout);
    e.Graphics.DrawString(fn.Name,fn,b,5,y,StringFormat.GenericTypographic);
    fn.Dispose();
  }

  b.Dispose();
}

Figure 2 shows the application in action.

See the Form1_Paint event handler, it shows specifically how to set the System.Drawing.Font type. It is based on using the System.Drawing.Text.PrivateFontCollection class.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Use the AddFontResourceEx API function through p/invoke, passing FR_PRIVATE to prevent installing a global font. Then you should be able to pass the font name to the Font constructor as usual.

Edit: If you use the PrivateFontCollection and load the font from an external file, you don't even need this. If you load the font from an embedded resource, use Ash's solution.