Win32 Use a resource font inside the application - c++

Question

I have an application, and I imported some fonts into the resource.
Now, I want to use those resourced fonts inside the application, without installing them to the computer that runs it.
The way I want to use the font resources is that I want to set a label's font to the resourced font by sending WM_SETFONT message to it.
Generally, if the font is already installed on the computer I would use the following code:
HDC hdc = GetDC(hwnd);
//here hwnd is the handle to the window.
const TCHAR* fontName = TEXT("/* THE FONT NAME */");
//this is where I'd enter the font name, but it only works when the font is already installed on the computer.
const long nFontSize = NFONTSIZE(7);
//this is where I set the font size.
LOGFONT logFont = {0};
logFont.lfHeight = -MulDiv(nFontSize, GetDeviceCaps(hdc, LOGPIXELSY), 72);
logFont.lfWeight = FW_SEMIBOLD;
_tcscpy_s(logFont.lfFaceName, fontName);
HFONT font = CreateFontIndirect(&logFont); //get the font handle
as soon as I get the HFONT handle, it's no difficulty to send the WM_SETFONT message to the label with:
SendMessage(hwnd, WM_SETFONT, (WPARAM)font, static_cast<LPARAM>(MAKELONG(TRUE, 0)));
//here hwnd is the handle of the static label.
But now, I don't want to set the font by this way because this only works when the specified font is already installed on the computer. I have MY OWN font file with the .ttf format imported as resource. I want to set the label's font to THIS .ttf font.

Answer 1

Assuming you have a token IDF_MYFONT defined for the resource ID, then you can embed your font in the executable with a line like this in your .rc (or .rc2) script:
IDF_MYFONT BINARY "..\\MyFont.ttf" // Or whatever the path to your font file is.
You can load and lock the font resource using code like the following:
HANDLE hMyFont = INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE; // Here, we will (hopefully) get our font handle
HINSTANCE hInstance = ::GetModuleHandle(nullptr); // Or could even be a DLL's HINSTANCE
HRSRC hFntRes = FindResource(hInstance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDF_MYFONT), L"BINARY");
if (hFntRes) { // If we have found the resource ...
HGLOBAL hFntMem = LoadResource(hInstance, hFntRes); // Load it
if (hFntMem != nullptr) {
void* FntData = LockResource(hFntMem); // Lock it into accessible memory
DWORD nFonts = 0, len = SizeofResource(hInstance, ares);
hMyFont = AddFontMemResourceEx(FntData, len, nullptr, &nFonts); // Fake install font!
}
}
Then, when you've finished with the font, you can release it from memory like this:
RemoveFontMemResourceEx(hMyFont);
I've included some checks on the return values for the system calls, but you can add others. And you will need to be able to handle the cases where any of these fail (e.g. providing a default font).
While the font is loaded/locked in memory, you can use it as though it were installed on the system: for example, using its name in a LOGFONT structure:
LOGFONT MyLogFont = { -8, 0, 0, 0, 400, FALSE, FALSE, FALSE, ANSI_CHARSET,
OUT_TT_PRECIS, CLIP_DEFAULT_PRECIS, CLEARTYPE_QUALITY,
VARIABLE_PITCH | FF_SWISS, L"MyFontName" };
Feel free to ask for further clarification and/or explanation.

Answer 2

Funny thing, I was just dealing with this problem yesterday night...
To solve it, the values passed into FindResourceW must match the resource type:
const auto resourceHandle{ FindResourceW(nullptr, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDR_FONT1), RT_FONT) };
const auto resourceLoad{ LoadResource(nullptr, resourceHandle) };
const auto pResource{ LockResource(resourceLoad) };
//do something with the resource pointer here...
FreeResource(resourceLoad);
This should give you a pointer to the resource, and you can then extract the font by creating a new file and write to it using WriteFile. To get the size of the resource, use SizeofResource.
Or you can create the font by passing in the resource pointer into AddFontMemResourceEx.