Text on path functions?

[srod]

Hi,

has anyone coded any kind of routine (Windows) for rendering text on any GDI path? For example, displaying a line of text on the boundary of a circle etc?

I understand the principles of how to do this kind of thing (and possess the math skills! ), but am just wondering if someone can save me the bother of what will be a quite complex routine?

(srod = lazy b*stard! )

[Rook Zimbabwe]

srod... There was a recent post about SVG graphics... vector graphics is what thatis all about (Corel Draw which I KNOW you know!) I bet you could use that to do this!

oh and B*stard was my call sign in the Army!

[srod]

I was the first one to reply to the SVG thread, so yes I was aware of it.

SVG is not what I am after on this occasion, but good old GDI.

It's no problem, I'll just have to roll my sleeves up and get busy.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

I had done just thought that since it pretty much had to be on a vector to get the shape correct that SVG wuold be the natural accompliment!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freetype/

http://www.xach.com/lisp/vecto/
http://www.apptree.net/drawkit.htm

http://cairographics.org/
http://g2.sourceforge.net/
http://www.afterstep.org/afterimage/
http://www.levien.com/libart/

I think the latest OGRE may have some ability in this scope as well...

Hope something helps!

[srod]

I appreciate the effort, but PB GDI code is what I am after and was just hoping that someone had already done the necessary grunt work.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

You know Cairo might work for Kwai Chang and his arrows issue!

I wish we had access to COCO as that drawkit looks FANTASTIC!

[srod]

Yes Cairo does look impressive.

[Rook Zimbabwe]

INKscape (A tool I am using and watching like I did with GIMP for years) uses Cairo

http://inkscape.modevia.com/win32libs/

They maintain a build for windows as well!

[idle]

Why cant you use the PB DrawRotatedText into an image and blit it to the dc?

So draw regular text to an image get its extents and then calculate the path

[Foz]

He's wanting to draw text that runs a long a (what could be a twisty) path, so that means for each letter point calculating the letter rotation, and making sure that it doesn't "crash" into the other letters.

We did do this in .net for rendering our own street maps (writing street names on twisty streets), but that obviously isn't in PB, otherwise I'd post it...

[srod]

Yes Foz is correct; take any closed GDI path, flatten it and then position each character perpendicular to the line segment upon which the glyph's baseline will reside. Not too difficult in theory, but in practice...

[djes]

Not in the GDI+ samples?

[srod]

Possibly, but I do not wish to use GDI+ for this.

[Foz]

GDI+ doesn't have a draw text to path - otherwise we would have used it when rendering our street maps, we want simple

Our code is a two stage process:
1. Calculate the angle and offset of each letter to the next (using Vector3 Lerps)
2. Use a matrix to rotate and transform the location for drawing each letter

There might be easier methods, but it was the easiest for us, and that was key

~ Foz

[srod]

Yes exactly. Though I am hoping to avoid matrix rotation with suitable text-alignments; we shall see.