Hello,
I am attempting to render freetype glyphs directly into a
windows device context. In other words, I do not want glyphs rendered as
bitmaps because in print scenarios the print spooler becomes exponentially
larger than the original document size. Specifically, in our application,
text rendering uses the standard freetype mechanism (under windows), which is
to lookup the glyph, render the glyph, then take the returned bitmap and BitBlt
(GDI API) the bitmap into a memory compatible device context (which is based on
an actual device context e.g. screen or printer…). As you might
already recognize, in a print scenario we simply reuse the display code to
render text into the printer device (instead of the screen).
However, as stated before, this is the source of our problem
because ultimately the operation performed against the printer device is a
raster operation and not a vector operation. In my limited understanding,
the raster operation results in bitmaps actually pushed into the postscript and
not vector commands, which results in large printer spool files (I have
confirmed in testing). Incidentally, I have scoured the web and this mail
group but have not seen anyone who has experienced this issue on any
level. Nor have I have discovered anyone who has made any attempt to
direct render the glyphs into a windows device context. Ironically, I
have seen other font engines that use freetype as their underlying font
library, which seem to offer this functionality. So, I have to believe
this is possible. I’m still searching but hope someone here has an
answer, as I am running out of options.
Thanks Alex