Font engine interface - RmlUi Documentation

The default font engine used in RmlUi provides an implementation based on the FreeType library. For users who want to render text using their own font system, a custom font engine interface can be constructed to replace the default implementation. In this case, the FreeType dependency can be removed entirely, see the CMake option NO_FONT_INTERFACE_DEFAULT for details.

Some of the most important functions for the font engine interface are given in the following.

// Called by RmlUi when it wants to load a font face from file.
// @param[in] file_name The file to load the face from.
// @param[in] fallback_face True to use this font face for unknown characters in other font faces.
// @param[in] weight The weight to load when the font face contains multiple weights, otherwise the weight to register the font as.
// @return True if the face was loaded successfully, false otherwise.
virtual bool LoadFontFace(const String& file_name, bool fallback_face, Style::FontWeight weight);

// Called by RmlUi when a font configuration is resolved for an element. Should return a handle that 
// can later be used to resolve properties of the face, and generate string geometry to be rendered.
// @param[in] family The family of the desired font handle.
// @param[in] style The style of the desired font handle.
// @param[in] weight The weight to load when the font face contains multiple weights, otherwise the weight to register the font as.
// @param[in] size The size of desired handle, in points.
// @return A valid handle if a matching (or closely matching) font face was found, NULL otherwise.
virtual FontFaceHandle GetFontFaceHandle(const String& family, Style::FontStyle style, Style::FontWeight weight, int size);

// Called by RmlUi when a list of font effects is resolved for an element with a given font face.
// @param[in] handle The font handle.
// @param[in] font_effects The list of font effects to generate the configuration for.
// @return A handle to the prepared font effects which will be used when generating geometry for a string.
virtual FontEffectsHandle PrepareFontEffects(FontFaceHandle handle, const FontEffectList &font_effects);

// Should return the point size of this font face.
virtual int GetSize(FontFaceHandle handle);

// Called by RmlUi when it wants to retrieve the width of a string when rendered with this handle.
// @param[in] handle The font handle.
// @param[in] string The string to measure.
// @param[in] prior_character The optionally-specified character that immediately precedes the string. This may have an impact on the string width due to kerning.
// @return The width, in pixels, this string will occupy if rendered with this handle.
virtual int GetStringWidth(FontFaceHandle handle, const String& string, Character prior_character = Character::Null);

// Called by RmlUi when it wants to retrieve the geometry required to render a single line of text.
// @param[in] face_handle The font handle.
// @param[in] font_effects_handle The handle to the prepared font effects for which the geometry should be generated.
// @param[in] string The string to render.
// @param[in] position The position of the baseline of the first character to render.
// @param[in] colour The colour to render the text.
// @param[out] geometry An array of geometries to generate the geometry into.
// @return The width, in pixels, of the string geometry.
virtual int GenerateString(FontFaceHandle face_handle, FontEffectsHandle font_effects_handle, const String& string, const Vector2f& position, const Colourb& colour, GeometryList& geometry);

The LoadFontFace() function is called when the user wants to load a font face. When an element is constructed, or some of its font-related properties are changed, it retrieves a FontFaceHandle through GetFontFaceHandle(). The font engine should then return a unique handle for the given family, style, weight and size.

If any font effects are applied to a given element, a list of such effects are submitted through PrepareFontEffects(). It is up to the font engine interface to decide how to handle them. A handle should be returned for the given list of font effects, this handle will later be used during the call to GenerateString(). If font effects are not used, there is no need to implement this function.

GetSize() is among several functions that should be implemented to allow RmlUi to query properties of the given font face.

During layouting, it is necessary to know the width of a given string without actually rendering it. Then, GetStringWidth() is called by RmlUi, expecting the interface to return the pixel width of the provided string for the given handle. Note that the string is encoded in UTF-8, there are some helper functions in RmlUi/Core/StringUtilities.h to iterate over such strings, if desired.

Finally, GenerateString() is called to actually generate the geometry of a given string. The face handle and font effects handle previously generated by the interface are provided. The function should return a list of geometry, as well as its pixel width.

See an example implementation of a custom font engine interface in the bitmapfont sample.