SUMMARY
The following information describes how to inform Windows that a
specific hardware font in a display device driver should be used
instead of the default system font.
In general, an OEM provides an .fon file that contains bitmaps and
metric information that is appropriate for the display board. This
font file is listed in the SYSTEM.ini file in the [boot] section as
follows:
fonts.fon=<OEM's .FON file>
At startup, GDI creates the SYSTEM_FONT stock font from this file.
If the display board has a hardware font available, it is possible to
force GDI to use this font as the SYSTEM_FONT font by creating an .FON
file that contains no bitmap information and has the third bit (04h)
set in the
dfType field and the absolute address of the hardware font in the
dfBitsOffset field in the
FONTINFO structure contained in the .fon file.
NOTE: It must be possible to draw that same font (or any other
hardware fonts that are provided within the display device driver)
onto main-memory bitmaps. GDI has no notion of some fonts being used
on the (dedicated) frame buffer and other fonts used on
host-memory bitmaps. Often, this requires that the hardware font be
read off of the board and into host memory where the display device
driver can move the bitmaps onto compatible bitmaps allocated by GDI.
Within these guidelines, and with that provision in mind, the
programmer can feel free to provide the system, OEM, and so on, with
as many additional fonts as are desired (say, from Bitstream, Xiphias,
or Conographics).
REFERENCES
For additional information about how Windows creates stock fonts, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
10837 A Discussion of Windows Fonts