Sourcing Fonts

Overview

Text in an SFML project always comes from a font file you supply yourself, SFML ships no default font. This lab covers two ways to get one: copying a font that is already sitting on your machine inside the Windows font store, and downloading a font published under an explicit open license from a site built for that purpose. Because a font file that ends up inside a project you submit or share is being redistributed, not just displayed on your own screen, this lab treats license checking as part of the workflow before loading the chosen font into an SFML program and rendering text with it.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lab you will be able to:

• Locate the Windows font store and identify the format of a font file stored there
• Explain why copying a font out of Windows into a shared or submitted project is a licensing risk, not just a technical copy
• Find a font published under an open license such as the SIL Open Font License and download it along with its license file
• Add a font file to a project's assets folder and load it in an SFML program with sf::Font
• Render text on screen with sf::Text to confirm the loaded font works

Concept

SFML has no built-in font. Every sf::Text object needs an sf::Font loaded from a real .ttf or .otf file on disk before it can draw a single glyph, so the first practical question on any project is not how to draw text but where the font file itself is allowed to come from.

The fastest source is already on your machine. Windows keeps its own interface fonts in a system folder, and because they are ordinary files, copying one out and into a project folder works without any error. It also usually breaks the font's license. Most fonts Microsoft bundles with Windows are licensed for use while running Windows, not for embedding inside a separate application, game or coursework submission you hand to someone else. The file copies fine. The right to redistribute it does not come with it. That gap between the copy working and the copy being allowed is the part this lab treats as the actual lesson, not the file operation itself.

The safer source is a font explicitly published for reuse. Font libraries built for this, such as Google Fonts, publish the large majority of their catalogue under the SIL Open Font License (OFL), which explicitly permits embedding, modifying and redistributing the font, including inside a shipped or submitted project, as long as the font itself is not sold on its own. Each download includes the license file itself so the terms travel with the font rather than being buried on a website.

Once a font file is chosen, loading it is identical regardless of where it came from. sf::Font::loadFromFile() takes a path to the .ttf or .otf file and returns false if it cannot find or parse it. An sf::Text object then takes a reference to that loaded font via setFont(), plus a string via setString() and a size via setCharacterSize(), before it can be drawn like any other SFML object.

Packages

Tasks

dir C:\Windows\Fonts\*.ttf

#include <SFML/Graphics.hpp>

int main()
{
    sf::RenderWindow window(sf::VideoMode(800, 600), "Font Check");

    sf::Font font;
    if (!font.loadFromFile("assets/fonts/YourFont-Regular.ttf"))
    {
        return -1;
    }

    sf::Text text;
    text.setFont(font);
    text.setString("Licensed and loaded");
    text.setCharacterSize(36);
    text.setFillColor(sf::Color::White);
    text.setPosition(40.f, 40.f);

    while (window.isOpen())
    {
        sf::Event event;
        while (window.pollEvent(event))
        {
            if (event.type == sf::Event::Closed)
                window.close();
        }

        window.clear(sf::Color(30, 30, 30));
        window.draw(text);
        window.display();
    }

    return 0;
}