Thread: Writing a HFONT to file.

Hi, I'm just wondering how the best way to write a HFONT variable into a file is.
My initial thought was to use an ifstream but obviously I cannot stream a HFONT data type. So should I typecast to something else? I'm really not sure. Any help would be great.

Thanks for any replies.

A Windows "handle" is a temporal object - it is not a permanent variable that you can re-use, so I don't really see the point of storing it in a file.

If you want to output it as a debug value, then you can use a cast to long, such as static_cast<long>myfont. But storing a HFONT value in a file is not meaningfull in general, becasue the value you get back is related to some data that the OS is holding for you, and it needs to be created for you.

You could save the data used for CreateFont if you like, but saving the HFONT that you get back is about as useful as saving a FILE pointer from fopen() - once the application has finished (or the file is closed), the FILE pointer is meaningless.

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Mats

Originally Posted by matsp

A Windows "handle" is a temporal object - it is not a permanent variable that you can re-use, so I don't really see the point of storing it in a file.

If you want to output it as a debug value, then you can use a cast to long, such as static_cast<long>myfont. But storing a HFONT value in a file is not meaningfull in general, becasue the value you get back is related to some data that the OS is holding for you, and it needs to be created for you.

You could save the data used for CreateFont if you like, but saving the HFONT that you get back is about as useful as saving a FILE pointer from fopen() - once the application has finished (or the file is closed), the FILE pointer is meaningless.

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Mats

I see. Thanks for the help, I didn't actually think about that. That probably would have ended up causing hours of frustration. seems I'll have to store th variables passed to CreateFont instead.

Thanks again.

Originally Posted by switchcase

I see. Thanks for the help, I didn't actually think about that. That probably would have ended up causing hours of frustration. seems I'll have to store th variables passed to CreateFont instead.

Thanks again.

Yes, that makes more sense.

Of course, some of them are probably "meaningless to save" because there are only one value that "makes sense".

If you want to just have a few different fonts that you use within your application, you could build a table of which fonts you use [with the relevant values to send to CreateFont], and then save the index of the table or some such.

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Mats

You can write HFONT to a file...it's the same saving a HDC or HBITMAP to a file...you must be know the .ttf or .fon files format

Originally Posted by Joelito

You can write HFONT to a file...it's the same saving a HDC or HBITMAP to a file...you must be know the .ttf or .fon files format

I don't think creating another font defition file was what the original poster actually was after - and whilst it is of course possible to write a file in the suitable format to use as a font, it doesn't seem that Windows actually has an API to do that. See: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms534233.aspx

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Mats

Originally Posted by switchcase

seems I'll have to store th variables passed to CreateFont instead.

Alternatively, you can use GetObject on your font handle to fill a LOGFONT struct and then save its contents to file. When you load the LOGFONT from file, use CreateFontIndirect to re-create the original font - assuming that font exists on the target system (enumerating the fonts might be useful in this respect).