Using Fonts in Graphic Displays

IDL uses three font systems for writing characters on the graphics device, whether that device be a display monitor or a printer: Hershey (vector) fonts, TrueType (outline) fonts, and device (hardware) fonts. Fonts are discussed in detail in Fonts (IDL Reference Guide).

Both TrueType and Vector fonts are displayed identically on all of the platforms that support IDL. This means that if your cross-platform application uses either the TrueType fonts supplied with IDL or the Vector fonts, there is no need for platform-dependent code.

In a widget application, specify a font using the FONT keyword. If you choose a device font, you may need to write platform-dependent code. See Fonts Used in Widget Applications (Application Programming) for details.

To set the font in an Object Graphics display, create an IDLgrFont object and assign this object to a text object using the IDLgrText object FONT property. See Font Objects (Object Programming) for more information.

Note
Within the IDL Workbench, you can specify what font is used in various areas (e.g., the Editor window or the Output Log window). See Colors and Fonts for details.