italic, bold and underlined font on iPhone

Question

How do you set a font to be both bold and italic. There is a boldSystemFontOfSize and italicSystemFoneOfSize, but I can't see the way to set a font to be both italic and bold.

As a second question, is there a way to set an underline on a font, or do you simply draw a line under text.

Answer 1

You have to actually ask for the bold, italic version of a font. For example:

UIFont *myFont = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica-BoldOblique" size:[UIFont systemFontSize]];

To get a list of everything available on the iPhone, put this little snippet in your applicationDidFinishLaunching: delegate method and look at the log output:

for (NSString *family in [UIFont familyNames]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [UIFont fontNamesForFamilyName:family]);
}

Note: Some font names say "oblique" - this is the same as italic.

I can't see a built-in way of doing underlines - you may have to draw the line yourself.

Answer 2

I recently wrote a blog post about the restrictions of the UIFont API and how to solve it. You can see it at http://eclipsesource.com/blogs/2012/07/26/uifont-from-a-css-definition/

With the code I provide there, you can get your desired system UIFont as easy as:

UIFont *myFont = [FontResolver fontWithDescription:@"font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"];