ofxSmartFont

A sane & simple approach to managing ofTrueType instances.

ofxSmartFont creates, caches and manages ofTrueType instances over the life of your OpenFrameworks application and makes them globally available to any part of your application that needs them.

It generates smart pointers that you can pass around your app without fear of dangling pointers and dead references when an ofTrueType instance inadvertantly goes out of scope.

Fonts are cached to ensure you never load the same one twice and are easily retrieved by name.

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Adding a font

ofxSmartFont::add("fonts/helvetica_neue.ttf", 12, "helvetica_12");

This returns a shared pointer to an ofxSmartFont instance that is guaranteed to persist in memory throughout the life of your application.

shared_ptr<ofxSmartFont> myFont = ofxSmartFont::add(file, size, name);

Note the name field is optional, if it is ommited it will default to the font's filename.

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Retrieving a font

Retrieving a font is as simple as requesting it by name:

shared_ptr<ofxSmartFont> helvetica_12pt = ofxSmartFont::get("helvetica_12");

However you can also search against the font's filename by also passing in a point size:

shared_ptr<ofxSmartFont> helvetica_12pt = ofxSmartFont::get("helvetica", 12);

Or by passing in a set of keys:

vector<string> keys = {"helvetica", "semibold", "italic"};
shared_ptr<ofxSmartFont> helvetica_semibold_italic_12pt = ofxSmartFont::get(keys, 12);

If a search fails to find what you're looking for it will return a nullptr that you can test against.

shared_ptr<ofxSmartFont> helvetica_12pt = ofxSmartFont::get("helvetica_12");
if (helvetica_12pt != nullptr) cout << "helvetica 12pt found!" << endl;

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Listing Cached Fonts

At any time you can list all of the fonts that are stored in memory via:

ofxSmartFont::list();
>> ofxSmartFont :: ------------------------------------------------
>> ofxSmartFont :: total # of fonts cached = 1
>> ofxSmartFont :: helvetica_12 (12pt -> fonts/helvetica_neue.ttf)
>> ofxSmartFont :: ------------------------------------------------

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ofxSmartFont Methods

Once you have a pointer to an ofxSmartFont instance you can call any ofTrueType method on it + a few additional convenience methods:

// draw a string at 100, 100 // 
helvetica_12pt->draw("hello", 100, 100);

// get the bounding box for a string // 
ofRectangle rect = helvetica_12pt->rect("hello");

// get the width of a string // 
int width = helvetica_12pt->width("hello");

// get the height of a string // 
int height = helvetica_12pt->height("hello");

// set the name //
helvetica_12pt->name("my_first_font");

// get the name //
string name = helvetica_12pt->name();

// get the font size //
int size = helvetica_12pt->size();

// get the file name //
string file = helvetica_12pt->file();