Font addons

General font routines

ALLEGRO_FONT

typedef struct ALLEGRO_FONT ALLEGRO_FONT;

A handle identifying any kind of font. Usually you will create it with al_load_font which supports loading all kinds of truetype fonts supported by the Freetype library. If you instead pass the filename of a bitmap file, it will be loaded with al_load_bitmap and a font in Allegro's bitmap font format will be created from it with al_grab_font_from_bitmap.

al_destroy_font

void al_destroy_font(ALLEGRO_FONT *f)

Frees the memory being used by a font structure.

al_init_font_addon

void al_init_font_addon(void)

al_shutdown_font_addon

void al_shutdown_font_addon(void)

Shut down the font addon. This is done automatically at program exit, but can be called any time the user wishes as well.

al_load_font

ALLEGRO_FONT *al_load_font(char const *filename, int size, int flags)

Loads a font from disk. This will use al_load_bitmap_font if you pass the name of a known bitmap format, or else al_load_ttf_font.

al_register_font_loader

bool al_register_font_loader(char const *extension,
   ALLEGRO_FONT *(*load_font)(char const *filename, int size, int flags))

Informs Allegro of a new font file type, telling it how to load files of this format.

The extension should include the leading dot ('.') character. It will be matched case-insensitively.

The load_font argument may be NULL to unregister an entry.

Returns true on success, false on error. Returns false if unregistering an entry that doesn't exist.

al_get_font_line_height

int al_get_font_line_height(const ALLEGRO_FONT *f)

Returns the usual height of a line of text in the specified font. For bitmap fonts this is simply the height of all glyph bitmaps. For truetype fonts it is whatever the font file specifies. In particular, some special glyphs may be higher than the height returned here.

al_get_text_width

int al_get_text_width(const ALLEGRO_FONT *f, const char *str)

Calculates the length of a string in a particular font, in pixels.

al_get_ustr_width

int al_get_ustr_width(const ALLEGRO_FONT *f, ALLEGRO_USTR const *ustr)

Like al_get_text_width but expects an ALLEGRO_USTR.

al_draw_text

void al_draw_text(const ALLEGRO_FONT *font, float x, float y, int flags,
   char const *text)

Writes the 0-terminated string text onto bmp at position x, y, using the specified font.

The flags parameter can be 0 or one of the following flags:

ALLEGRO_ALIGN_LEFT - Draw the text left-aligned (same as 0).
ALLEGRO_ALIGN_CENTRE - Draw the text centered around the given position.
ALLEGRO_ALIGN_RIGHT - Draw the text right-aligned to the given position.

al_draw_ustr

void al_draw_ustr(const ALLEGRO_FONT *font, float x, float y, int flags,
   const ALLEGRO_USTR *ustr)

Like al_draw_text, except the text is passed as an ALLEGRO_USTR instead of a 0-terminated char array.

al_draw_justified_text

void al_draw_justified_text(const ALLEGRO_FONT *font, float x1, float x2,
   float y, float diff, int flags, const char *text)

Like al_draw_text, but justifies the string to the specified area.

al_draw_justified_ustr

void al_draw_justified_ustr(const ALLEGRO_FONT *font, float x1, float x2,
   float y, float diff, int flags, const ALLEGRO_USTR *ustr)

See al_draw_justified_text.

al_draw_textf

void al_draw_textf(const ALLEGRO_FONT *font, float x, float y, int flags,
   const char *format, ...)

Formatted text output, using a printf() style format string, all parameters have the same meaning as with al_draw_text otherwise.

al_draw_justified_textf

void al_draw_justified_textf(const ALLEGRO_FONT *f, float x1, float x2, float y,
   float diff, int flags, const char *format, ...)

Like al_draw_justified_text and al_draw_textf.

al_get_text_dimensions

void al_get_text_dimensions(const ALLEGRO_FONT *f,
   char const *text,
   int *bbx, int *bby, int *bbw, int *bbh, int *ascent, int *descent)

Sometimes, the al_get_text_width and al_get_font_line_height functions are not enough for exact text placement, so this function returns some additional information.

Returned variables (all in pixel):

x, y - Offset to upper left corner of bounding box.
w, h - Dimensions of bounding box.
ascent - Ascent of the font.
descent - Descent of the font.

If the X is the position you specify to draw text, the meaning of ascent and descent and the line height is like in the figure below. Note that glyphs may go to the left and upwards of the X, in which case x and y will have negative values.

X------------------------
    /\         |        |
   /  \        |        |
  /____\       ascent   |
 /      \      |        |
/        \     |        height
----------------        |
               |        |
               descent  |
               |        |
-------------------------

al_get_ustr_dimensions

void al_get_ustr_dimensions(const ALLEGRO_FONT *f,
   ALLEGRO_USTR const *ustr,
   int *bbx, int *bby, int *bbw, int *bbh, int *ascent, int *descent)

See al_get_text_dimensions.

al_get_allegro_font_version

uint32_t al_get_allegro_font_version(void)

Returns the (compiled) version of the addon, in the same format as al_get_allegro_version.

Bitmap fonts

al_grab_font_from_bitmap

ALLEGRO_FONT *al_grab_font_from_bitmap(
   ALLEGRO_BITMAP *bmp,
   int ranges_n, int ranges[])

Creates a new font from an Allegro bitmap. You can delete the bitmap after the function returns as the font will contain a copy for itself.

Parameters:

bmp: The bitmap with the glyphs drawn onto it
n: Number of unicode ranges in the bitmap.
ranges: 'n' pairs of first and last unicode point to map glyphs to for each range.

The bitmap format is as in the followsing example, which contains three glyphs for 1, 2 and 3.

.............
. 1 .222.333.
. 1 .  2.  3.
. 1 .222.333.
. 1 .2  .  3.
. 1 .222.333.
.............

In the above illustration, the dot is for pixels having the background color. It is determined by the color of the top left pixel in the bitmap. There should be a border of at least 1 pixel with this color to the bitmap edge and between all glyphs.

Each glyph is inside a rectangle of pixels not containing the background color. The height of all glyph rectangles should be the same, but the width can vary.

The placement of the rectangles does not matter, except that glyphs are scanned from left to right and top to bottom to match them to the specified unicode codepoints.

The glyphs will simply be drawn using al_draw_bitmap, so usually you will want the rectangles filled with full transparency and the glyphs drawn in opaque white.

Examples:

int ranges[] = {32, 126};
al_font_grab_font_from_bitmap(bitmap, 1, ranges)

int ranges[] = {
    0x0020, 0x007F,  /* ASCII */
    0x00A1, 0x00FF,  /* Latin 1 */
    0x0100, 0x017F,  /* Extended-A */
    0x20AC, 0x20AC}; /* Euro */
al_font_grab_font_from_bitmap(bitmap, 4, ranges)

The first example will grab glyphs for the 95 standard printable ASCII characters, beginning with the space character (32) and ending with the tilde character (126). The second example will map the first 96 glyphs found in the bitmap to ASCII range, the next 95 glyphs to Latin 1, the next 128 glyphs to Extended-A, and the last glyph to the Euro character. (This is just the characters found in the Allegro 4 font.)

al_load_bitmap_font

ALLEGRO_FONT *al_load_bitmap_font(const char *fname)

Load a bitmap font from. It does this by first calling al_load_bitmap and then al_grab_font_from_bitmap. If you want to for example load an old A4 font, you could load the bitmap yourself, then call al_convert_mask_to_alpha on it and only then pass it to al_grab_font_from_bitmap.

TTF fonts

al_load_ttf_font

ALLEGRO_FONT *al_load_ttf_font(char const *filename, int size, int flags)

Loads a truetype font from a file using the FreeType library. Quoting from the FreeType FAQ this means support for many different font formats:

TrueType, OpenType, Type1, CID, CFF, Windows FON/FNT, X11 PCF, and others

The size parameter determines the size the font will be rendered at, specified in pixel. The standard font size is measured in units per EM, if you instead want to specify the size as the total height of glyphs in pixel, pass it as a negative value.

Note: If you want to display text at multiple sizes, load the font multiple times with different size parameters.

The only flag supported right now is:

ALLEGRO_TTF_NO_KERNING - Do not use any kerning even if the font file supports it.

al_load_ttf_font_entry

ALLEGRO_FONT *al_load_ttf_font_entry(ALLEGRO_FILE *file,
    char const *filename, int size, int flags)

Like al_load_ttf_font, but the font is read from the file handle. The filename is only used to find possible additional files next to a font file.

Note: The file handle is owned by the returned ALLEGRO_FONT object and must not be freed by the caller, as Freetype expects to be able to read from it at a later time.

al_init_ttf_addon

bool al_init_ttf_addon(void)

Call this after al_init_font_addon to make al_load_font recognize .ttf and other formats supported by al_load_ttf_font.

al_get_allegro_ttf_version

uint32_t al_get_allegro_ttf_version(void)

Returns the (compiled) version of the addon, in the same format as al_get_allegro_version.