The FontProvider
class provides registration point for objects (font providers) which
wish to service requests from text nodes for representations of given FontStyles
(a VRML97 node). Each provider has a geometry "format" which
specifies the particular type of text that instances can render
('solid', 'outline', and 'bitmap' are the currently available
formats). When searching for a font, FontProviders with formats
which match the requested format will be given preference over those
which do not match, but if no matching providers are available,
whatever provider can match the style will be used.
The OpenGLContext text/font rendering system loosely follows the
VRML97 text-rendering system. A Text node defines two attributes,
string and fontStyle. String is actually an MFString value where
each value is a line to be displayed. The FontStyle node defines
the rendering parameters for the string value.
Here is an example of some VRML97 text content:
#VRML V2.0 utf8
Shape {
geometry Text {
string [ "Hello World", "VRML Text Node" ]
fontStyle FontStyle {
family [ "TYPEWRITER", "SERIF"]
style [ "BOLD"]
}
}
appearance Appearance { material Material { diffuseColor 1,1,1}}
}
You can view this sample with a command line something like this:
P:\OpenGLContext\tests>vrml_view.py wrls\text_simple.wrl
Things that we will want to take note of:
- the "family" field of the FontStyle node controls the font-face used to render the text. VRML97 is a cross-platform international standard, so it tends toward abstraction, rather than concrete specification. However, you can specify a particular platform-specific name for a font-face as one of the values in the family field. OpenGLContext recognizes the following family values from the VRML97 standard (bracketed name describes the chosen font):
- SERIF (Roman)
- SANS (Arial)
- ROMAN (Roman)
- TYPEWRITER (Courier)
- With FontTools installed, OpenGLContext can scan the system's
installed fonts and query the font files for their font names, family
names etc. This allows for matching font names with considerably more
accuracy than is obtained without the FontTools module installed.
It also allows the "family" types enumerated above to be intelligently
queried, rather than using lowest-common-denominator defaults.
- the "style" field of the FontStyle node controls the weight and slant characteristics of the font. OpenGLContext recognizes the following weight and/or slant values, which can be included in any order within the style field (first name in each set to match takes precedence):
- weight -- thin, extralight, ultralight, light, normal, regular,
plain, medium, semibold, demibold, bold, extrabold, ultrabold, black,
heavy
- slant -- italic
- the "string" field of the Text node is encoded using UTF-8 Unicode, which should allow for specifying content for non-English environments, but this has never been tested beyond the most rudimentary of sample content. There is no support for the left-to-right and top-to-bottom orientation reversals seen in the VRML97 specification.
- rather than particular support for font colors and the like, OpenGLContext (following VRML97) simply applies the Shape node's appearance to the text geometry
- there is currently no anti-aliasing support save in PyGame bitmap
fonts
- geometry created with the Text node is polygonal unless otherwise specified
- the FontStyle3D
class provides mechanisms for describing extruded text
The Font object is responsible for the actual rendering of the text.
It is called by the Text node's render method with the string to
be rendered. The Font is responsible for defining the appropriate
font, decoding the text to Unicode, generating the correct display-lists
for rendering characters in the given font, determining the display
metrics for the characters, and performing text layout.