Working with GDI+ Pens and Fonts

The System.Drawinging.Pen and System.Drawing.Font classes represent pen and font objects in GDI+.

The Pen Class

A pen draws a line of specified width and style. You always use Pen constructor to create a pen. The constructor initializes a new instance of the Pen class. You can initialize it with a color or brush.

Initializes a new instance of the Pen class with the specified color. The Color is the only one parameter passed in constructor as an argument.

public Pen(Color);

Initializes a new instance of the Pen class with the specified Brush. The Brush is the only one parameter passed in constructor as an argument.

public Pen(Brush);

Initializes a new instance of the Pen class with the specified Brush and width.

public Pen(Brush, float);

Initializes a new instance of the Pen class with the specified Color and Width.

public Pen(Color, float);

Here is one example:

Pen pn = new Pen( Color.Blue );

or

Pen pn = new Pen( Color.Blue, 100 );

Some of its most commonly used properties are Alignment, Brush, Color, and Width, which are self-explanatory.

The Font Class

The Font class defines a particular format for text such as font type, size, and style attributes. You use font constructor to create a font.

Initializes a new instance of the Font class with the specified attributes.

public Font(string, float);

Initializes a new instance of the Font class from the specified existing Font and FontStyle.

public Font(Font, FontStyle);

Where FontStyle is an enumeration, which include values Bold, Italic, Regular, StrikeOut, and Underline, which are self-explanatory. Here is one example:

Graphics g ;

Font font = new Font("Times New Roman", 26);

Some of its most commonly used properties are:

Bold	Gets a value indicating whether this Font is bold.
FontFamily	Gets the FontFamily of this Font.
Height	Gets the height of this Font.
Italic	Gets a value indicating whether this Font is Italic.
Name	Gets the face name of this Font.
Size	Gets the size of this Font.
SizeInPoints	Gets the size, in points, of this Font.
Strikeout	Gets a value indicating whether this Font is strikeout (has a line through it).
Style	Gets style information for this Font.
Underline	Gets a value indicating whether this Font is underlined.
Unit	Gets the unit of measure for this Font.

Working with Fonts and FontFamily

Although we've already discussed Fonts in the previous section of this chapter but there is more to be discussed about fonts.

The System.Drawing.Font class represents a font type. For example,

Font greenSolid = new Font("Verdana", 14);

Creates a font type verdana with size 14. You can also use a FontStyle as an argument when constructing a font. The below line creates a font of Tahoma with different styles.

Font redStyle = new Font("Tahoma", 20, FontStyle.Bold|FontStyle.Italic|FontStyle.Underline);

g.DrawString("Text on the Screen", greenSolid, new SolidBrush(Color.Green), 10,10);

g.DrawString("Red Text", redStyle, new HatchBrush(HatchStyle.DiagonalCross, Color.Chocolate, Color.Red), 50,40);

The FontStyle Enumeration defines these styles.

Table 11-6. FontStyle Enumeration

Member	Description
Bold	Bold Text.
Italic	Italic Text
Regular	Regular Text.
StrikeOut	Text with a line in middle.
Underline	Underline Text.

FontFamily is another class we'd like to discuss before moving to the next topic. System.Drawing.FontFamily class represents a font family, which is used to work with similar kind of fonts with different style variations. For example, Tahoma font can have different styles and size.

FontFamily tahomaFmly = new FontFamily("Tahoma");

Here tahomaFmly represents the Tahoma font family.

In the below sample example, green28 and red14Italic uses same font family to create a Tahoma font with different styles.

FontFamily fontFmly = new FontFamily("Tahoma");
Font green28 = new Font(fontFmly, 28);
Font red14Italic = new Font(fontFmly, 14, FontStyle.Italic);
g.DrawString("Text on the Screen", green28, new SolidBrush(Color.Green), 10,10);
g.DrawString("Text on the Screen", red14Italic, new SolidBrush(Color.Red), 10,10);

FontFamily class provides members to get information about a family of fonts. These members include GetName, GetLineSpacing, GetEmHeight, IsStyleAvailable and so on. All of them are self-explanatory.

Working with Pens

We've seen earlier in this chapter that the Graphics class's draw members such as DrawLine, DrawRectangle, DrawArc and so on use pens to draw objects. A pen draws a line with specified width and style. The System.Drawing.Pen and System.Drawing.Pens classes represent pens in GDI+. Some of the System.Drawing.Pen class properties are defined in the following table.

Public Instance Properties
Brush	Attached brush with a pen.
Color	Color of a pen.
Dash Style	Dashed line style.
DashCap	Style at the beginning and at the end of dashed lines.
DashedOffset	Distance from the start of a line before a dashed pattern.
CustomStartCap, CustomEndCap	Custom cap style at the beginning and end of the line.
DashPattern	Dash pattern.
DashStyle	Dashed line style.
StartCap, EndCap	Starts and ends the cap style.
PenTyle	Style of lines of a pen.
Transform	Geometric transformation of a pen.
Width	Width of a pen

The System.Drawing.Pens class represents pens of all the colors. The System.Drawing.Pens class is non inheritable. For example,

Pen redPn = new Pen(Color.Red, 14);
Pen redPen = Pens.Red;
g.DrawLine(redPen, 10, 40, 50, 60);

You can set the other properties:

pnGreen.Width = 4;
pnGreen.DashStyle = DashStyle.DashDot; 

The DashStyle members and their description are given below - 

Member	Description
Custom	custom dash style.
Dash	A line consisting of dashes.
DashDot	A line of a repeating pattern of dash-dot.
DashDotDot	A line of a repeating pattern of dash-dot-dot.
Dot	A line consisting of dots.
Solid	A solid line.