How to make glyph bold using freetype library?

Question

I have been working with glyph, I know to make some font bold you have to load bold version of that Font. But What i want to achieve is make regular font bolded using free type. I have achieved the italic style using FT_TRANSFORM now i want to make it bold too. Any ideas? Is it Possible? I have read FreeType API reference guide but could not found the luck! Regards

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 28 '15 at 05:49

2

To emulate boldness you can print the same glyph twice with one px offset. I don't think though that you will get perfect results but at least something.

answered Aug 28 '15 at 05:49

c-smile

26,734
7
59
86

can you please guide me how to do that? – Ali Kazmi Aug 28 '15 at 05:52
2

What exactly you need a guide for? How to render glyphs using FreeType or what? – c-smile Aug 28 '15 at 05:54
Render glyphs using free type to get bold characters – Ali Kazmi Aug 28 '15 at 05:57

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 01 '20 at 22:02

1

I know this is a really old question.

SFML code shows how to do this: https://github.com/SFML/SFML/blob/master/src/SFML/Graphics/Font.cpp#L558

Important bit seems to be the FT_Outline_Embolden and FT_Bitmap_Embolden functions.

answered Jan 01 '20 at 22:02

Daid Braam

173
4

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 28 '15 at 09:13

I wrote this before. Here I added a line for second print to make letters bold like @c-smile mentioned. I don't recommend tricks like this. If there is an standard way, that's better.

void DrawFTGlyph(FT_Bitmap* pBitmap, int x, int y)
{
    int i, j, p, q;
    int xMax = x + pBitmap->width;
    int yMax = y + pBitmap->rows;
    D3DXCOLOR color = D3DCOLOR_RGBA(255, 255, 255, 1);

    for (i = x, p = 0; i < xMax; i++, p++)
    {
        for (j = y, q = 0; j < yMax; j++, q++)
        {
            if (i < 0 || j < 0 || 
                i >= texture.Size().Width() || 
                j >= texture.Size().Height())
            {
                continue;
            }

            BYTE intensity = pBitmap->buffer[q * pBitmap->pitch + p];
            D3DXCOLOR pixel(color.r * intensity, color.g * intensity, color.b * intensity, color.a * intensity);

            texture.SetPixel(i, j, pixel);
            texture.SetPixel(i + 2, j + 2, pixel); // Second print
        }
    }
}

How to make glyph bold using freetype library?

3 Answers3