Decoding Microsoft True Type Font Files

Question

I am working on an embedded platform (STM32F407) with a TFT LCD as a display (480x800px) and would like to make my user interface somewhat customizable to the end user. I figured the best source of fonts would be windows compatible as their the most common.

My current implementation uses my own custom drawn font in a binary format and a descriptor table giving the character width and ascii value but having to draw my own font bit by bit is tedious.

I would like to read in a True Type Font file from an SD card and be able to use the different sized glyphs inside it but I have not seen a strait forward implementation on how to actually achieve this magic. Can somebody point me to a good c/c++ example of what I am looking for?

Even better as a way to iron out the kinks I would like to make a simple gcc command line program that will print out my input with a selected font using '#' as pixels. That way I can just worry about implementation and not any other random bugs that might pop up.

Can anybody help me out?

Answer 1

也许你可以使用Freetype库。

Answer 2

As duskwuff says: TTF is primarily a vector format, would need to write a renderer. Better off using an image file to define the font, or using a bitmap font format like FNT (Windows) or BDF (UNIX).

Here is my answer to my own question: AngelCode's BMFont & Useage . This makes choosing selective characters from the installed char set, mix in a font and exports an image with a map file to each character. Simple to use.