Fonts OS Design Development

You can change the appearance of your operating system (OS) by customizing fonts. Windows Embedded CE allows you to replace fonts, specify a directory from which the OS should load fonts, enable ClearType, enable anti-aliased fonts, enable linked fonts, change the font size for the Help system, enable end user-defined characters (EUDC), and enable line breaking for Asian fonts.

 

Windows Embedded CE loads system fonts from the /Windows directory on the device by default.

You can specify the directory from which Windows Embedded CE loads fonts by setting the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/FontPath registry key to the directory that you want to use. Do not include a trailing backslash when you specify the path for the directory.

The following example shows how to change the directory from which Windows Embedded CE loads system fonts to /Fonts.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/FontPath] "FontPath"="//Fonts" Replacing Fonts For some OS designs or applications, you may need to be able to replace the default Windows Embedded CE fonts with other fonts, including custom fonts. You can modify the Windows Embedded CE registry to replace default fonts, to replace fonts used on an OS design, and to replace raster fonts with TrueType fonts. Windows Embedded CE uses a default set of fonts that exist in ROM. You can replace these fonts by modifying the Windows Embedded CE registry and the Project.bib file. The replacement font must exist in the Windows directory on the target device. The following table shows the locations of the fonts that you can replace through the Windows Embedded CE registry. Font location Registry key System HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/GDI/SysFnt Menu bar HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/GWE/Menu/BarFnt Pop-up menu HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/GWE/Menu/PopFnt Out of Memory window HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/GWE/OOMFnt To change a font Modify your Project.reg project registry file by adding the registry keys listed in the preceding table for the fonts you want to replace. Under each registry key, add the following variables and values: "Nm"= font-name "Ht"=DWORD: height "It"=DWORD: italics-flag "Wt"=DWORD: weight "CS"=DWORD: character-set The following table describes each of these variables. Variable Description font-name Font name, not including the extension. For example, to load the Arial font, Arial.ttf, use the following value for the font-name variable: "Nm"=Arial height Font height, in pixels. italics-flag Set to 1 for italics; 0 for no italics. weight Font weight, which can be one of the FW_* values. character-set Defines the character set, which can be one of the *_CHARSET values. If you are adding a new default font to the Windows Embedded CE font set, add the font(s) you want to use from the Catalog. The OS will use your new default font automatically but keep the original system default font installed, depending on the locale setting. If you are adding a new default font to the Windows Embedded CE font set and want to remove all the unnecessary fonts that are installed with it, set the REPLACE_SYSGEN_DEFAULT_FONT and add the fonts you want to use from the Catalog. If you are setting a default font that is not part of the Windows Embedded CE font set, for example, a font obtained from a third-party, a font you have developed yourself, etc., add the font to the Project.bib file. If you do not want to remove all other fonts, just add your default font to the Catalog and it will be used automatically, as described in step 3. If you do want to remove unnecessary fonts, set REPLACE_SYSGEN_DEFAULT_FONT as described in step 4. Rebuild your image. 8/27/2009   Windows Embedded CE provides a font linking capability so that you can link one or more TrueType fonts to another TrueType font. Font linking is typically used to enable Roman fonts to display non-Roman characters. Windows Embedded CE provides font linking in the MGTT component. To enable font linking, configure the FontLinkMethods entry under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/GDI registry key. You can use the FontLinkMethods entry to enable cell height adjustment. When enabled, the rasterizer ignores internal leading when calculating the cell height of the linked font. Internal leading is commonly used for Roman fonts to allow accent marks to be placed within the interline spacing. Kanji fonts do not use internal leading. By not including internal leading in the realization of the linked font, the font is rendered from one to several point sizes smaller. The following example shows the FontLinkMethods entry. Copy Code HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/GDI FontLinkMethods=dword:n The value for n can be 1, 2, or 3, as defined in the following table. Value Description 1 Enables cell height adjustment for fonts that are created with a LOGFONT lfHeight member value greater than 0. The adjustment for cell height is most typically warranted for this category of fonts. This setting is enabled in the Enterprise Web Pad design template of the Platform Builder for Japanese devices. 2 Enables cell height adjustment for fonts that are created with a LOGFONT lfHeight member value less than 0. 3 Enables cell height adjustment for fonts that are created with a LOGFONT lfHeight member value either greater than 0 or less than 0. You can map linked fonts to base fonts by configuring the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/FontLink/SystemLink registry key. The following example shows how to link Tahoma, the base font, to Trebuchet MS, the linked font, by providing the path to the linked font .ttf file and the linked font name. Copy Code [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/FontLink/SystemLink] "Tahoma"="//windows//Trebuc.ttf,Trebuchet MS" When using font linking, you can define one or more Unicode characters that should be obtained from the linked font, even if they are present in the base font. You can define these skipped characters by using the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/FontLink/SkipTable registry key. This registry key is read only when the OS boots. The following example shows that, even though there is a character in Tahoma at Unicode character 005c, the character in the linked font will be used instead. Copy Code Tahoma=005c, 00a5, 007e, 0391-03c9, 2026, 2116, 221a, 25a0-25ff For bold fonts, the graphics device interface (GDI) determines whether to simulate bold, using the base font only as a reference. If you use a bold font to write a string, and the base font is bold in the .ttf file, but the linked font is not, text in the linked font does not display as bold.