iTextSharp apply font style to existing font

Question

In the beginning of a document I created a new font:

BaseFont baseFont = BaseFont.CreateFont(@"C:\Windows\Fonts\Calibri.ttf", "Identity-H", BaseFont.EMBEDDED);
var font1 = new Font(baseFont, 12, Font.NORMAL);

Somewhere in the middle of the same document I want to use the same font (fontfamily & size) with different style: bold & italic.

Can I somehow change the style of font1 or do I have to create a new Font?

Note: I know I can do:

font1.SetStyle("bold");
font1.SetStyle("italic");

but how about both? And maybe also underline ...

Answer 1

First of all, in

BaseFont baseFont = BaseFont.CreateFont(@"C:\Windows\Fonts\Calibri.ttf", "Identity-H", BaseFont.EMBEDDED);

you load the font file for regular Calibri. If you derive any Font from this BaseFont , it uses the regular Calibri font file, no matter which style attributes you set. This in particular means that

• a "bold" style is implemented by not only filling the normal glyph contour but also stroking a line along it (a variant of what's called "poor man's bold") and
• an "italic" style is implemented by applying a transformation matrix which skews a bit.

You get better quality bold and italic variations by loading the bold or italic Calibri

BaseFont baseFontBold = BaseFont.CreateFont(@"C:\Windows\Fonts\Calibrib.ttf", "Identity-H", BaseFont.EMBEDDED);
BaseFont baseFontItalic = BaseFont.CreateFont(@"C:\Windows\Fonts\Calibrii.ttf", "Identity-H", BaseFont.EMBEDDED);
BaseFont baseFontBoldItalic = BaseFont.CreateFont(@"C:\Windows\Fonts\Calibriz.ttf", "Identity-H", BaseFont.EMBEDDED);

and deriving a Font with style "normal" from the matching BaseFont .

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That been said, now to your main question:

I know I can do:

 font1.SetStyle("bold"); font1.SetStyle("italic");

but how about both? And maybe also underline...

For both you can simply do as you wrote

font1.SetStyle("bold");
font1.SetStyle("italic");

ie setting both sequentially, because SetStyle(String) actually works more like an AddStyle . Alternatively, though, you can also do

font1.SetStyle("bold italic");

If you need to reset the set of selected styles to normal, you can use SetStyle(int) which really works like a setter should:

font1.SetStyle(0);

And maybe also underline...

The String constants for the available styles are

• "normal"
• "bold"
• "italic"
• "oblique"
• "underline"
• "line-through"