Using Hardware Fonts

To use hardware fonts, you must set the value of the !P.Font system variable to 0 (zero). For example:

note	By default, software fonts are enabled (!P.Font is set to –1). If you want to use hardware fonts by default, add the statement !P.Font=0 to the PV‑WAVE startup file.

note	Windows hardware fonts are not affected by the current graphics function. This means that you cannot erase drawn text with an XOR operation if hardware fonts are used. This is a limitation of Windows. The only exception is the graphics function GXnoop, which works correctly.

note	Clipping does not work when hardware fonts are selected.

In general, you can use hardware fonts in the same way you use software fonts. The text formatting commands (for example, !U) and font commands (for example, !3) described and listed in the previous section can all be used with hardware fonts.

note	A string resource file is used to map software font commands to specific hardware fonts. A resource file with default settings is provided; however, you can easily change these defaults. This resource file is described in detail in "String Resource File for Font Mappings".

PV‑WAVE provides a set of DEVICE procedure keywords that can be used to set the default font for the PostScript driver. See the appendix called Output Devices and Window Systems in the PV‑WAVE Reference for a list of these DEVICE keywords.

note

The default PostScript fonts changed with PV‑WAVE 6.21. The previous default PostScript font was 12 point Helvetica. The new default PostScript font is 14 point Times Roman. You can change the default font by editing the file fontmap_ps, which is discussed in "String Resource File for Font Mappings".

For example, to set the default PostScript font to boldface Helvetica, use the commands:

The following formatting commands for hardware fonts can be used with the WIN32, WMF, X, and PostScript drivers:

!Pxx—Switch to point size xx of the current font, where xx is a two digit integer (01-99).

PV‑WAVE provides a string resource file that lets you map PV‑WAVE software font commands to device-specific hardware fonts. This section explains the basic format and location of this file.

The string resource file used for font mapping consists of a tab or space separated list of font numbers and target fonts. For example, the first five lines of the default fontmap file for the WIN32 driver are as follows:

3	Times New Roman, 12
4	Symbol, 12
5	Times New Roman, 12, Bold
6	Times New Roman, 12, Bold, Italic
7	Symbol, 12, Bold, Italic

For example, if the output device is set to WIN32 and hardware fonts are selected (!P.Font = 0), then you can use the !5 command in a text string to produce Times New Roman, 12 point, boldface text in your plot:

By default, the fontmap string resource files for each device are in:

Files are named according to the convention: fontmap_device. For example, the fontmap file for the WIN32 device is:

note	If you change the fontmap_x file to add a localized font, we recommend that you make a similar change to the fontmap_ps file. The reason for this is that VDA Tools assume that the X Window and PostScript font number load equivalent fonts.

You can also use the environment variable WAVE_FONTMAP_PATH to specify a path of directories to search for the font map file.

The default value of the variable WAVE_FONTMAP_FILEBASE is fontmap. Thus, the default font mapping file for the WIN32 driver is:

note	The value of WAVE_FONTMAP_FILEBASE can be the name of a hidden file.