Introduction

This page provides a simple source code that draws a string of characters using OpenGL with an (ugly) vector fonts. The font size and text location are controlled by OpenGL's transformation matrix, or typically glScale (glScaled or glScalef) for font size, and glTranslate (glTranslated or glTranslatef) for text location. Although the fonts don't look good, you don't need to rely on the operating system in drawing a text with this source code.

Although OpenGL is a very powerful graphics toolkit, it is not good at drawing a string of characters. If you need to draw a string of characters using OpenGL, you typically need to use wglUseFontBitmap in Windows or glXUseXFont in X-Window environment. Both functions are platform dependent functions, and thus you lose portability as soon as you use such functions. You can use #ifdef, #else, and #endif to absorb the portability problem, but you may not be able to use same fonts in a different platform. Also you cannot control the font size precisely because it is controlled by the platform. Sometimes it is necessary to draw a string in an exact size, but it is often impossible because the platform controls it. In summary, not having a standard (and sufficiently sophisticated) way of drawing a string of characters is a big disadvantage of OpenGL.

I could not avoid this problem when I tried to implement instrument panels in YSFLIGHT. So I excavated ugly fonts I've made couple of years ago, and made it usable from OpenGL. I suppose this small code is useful for someone who has a similar problem as mine. So I decided to make it open to everyone. What you need are a source code (uglyfont.cpp), and a header (uglyfont.h). Put them in your project, and add #include "uglyfont.h" at the top of your source file in which you want to draw a string of characters using OpenGL. You can also download a sample code (sample.cpp) that shows some usages of the function.

(Screenshot of sample.cpp)

Copyright

I keep the copyright of uglyfont.cpp, uglyfont.h, and sample.cpp, but you can use them regardless of the purpose, i.e., commercial or non-commercial, open source or proprietary. You do not need to ask me for the permission. But, I do not take any responsibilities on the consequences of using these files. Please use them on your own risks.

Explanation of the Function

The definition of the function that draws a string of characters is as follows.

void YsDrawUglyFont(const char str[],int centering,int useDisplayList=1);

const char str[] String to be drawn.

int centering If 1, the string will be centered (explained below)

int useDisplayList If 1 (default), the function uses OpenGL's display list. Display lists 1400 through 1655 will be used by this function. If it conflicts with your program, plsase modify const int YsUglyFontBase=1400; in uglyfont.cpp. Using the display lists will reduce the transaction between the CPU and the graphics hardware, and thus improves the performance.

The size of the fonts drawn by this function can be controlled by glScale (glScalef or glScaled). Without scaling, the font size is 1.0x1.0x0.0. The bottom left corner of the rectangular area take by a character is (0,0,0), and the top right corner is (1,1,0) in the coordinate frame of each character as shown below.

Hence, the string consists of N letters, the rectangle that encloses the string can be defined as (0,0,0)-(N,1,0).

If glScalef(0.5,0.5,0.5); is applied before drawing calling this function, the result will look like:

The following two pictures compare the effect of centering (the second parameter of this function). If centering is 0, the origin is left bottom corner of the first letter shown below.

If centering is 1, the origin is the center of the string as follows.

When you want to draw a string in 2D, after setting up the projection matrix, and the modelview matrix (see also sample.cpp), you can draw a string by writing:

glPushMatrix();
glTranslatef(x,y,0);
glScalef(fontWid,-fontHei,1.0);
YsDrawUglyFont("ABCDEF",0);
glPopMatrix();

where (x,y) is the origin in the screen coordinate, and font Wid and fontHei are the size of a letter in pixels. Note that the second parameter of glScalef is minus. If you take the top left corner of the screen as the origin, and the vector (0,1) points downward in the screen coordinate, Y coordinate must be inverted to make the letters upright.

If you take the bottom left corner of the screen as the origin, and the vector (0,1) points upward in the screen coordinate (it's a bit unnatural to me though), you don't need to put a minus sign in front of fontHei.

Drawing a String of Characters using OpenGL.

Introduction

Copyright

Explanation of the Function