| page_type | languages | products | name | urlFragment | description | extendedZipContent | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
sample |
|
|
DWriteCore gallery sample |
dwritecore-gallery-sample |
Demonstrates the DWriteCore API, which is a reimplementation of the Windows DirectWrite API. |
|
This sample application demonstrates the DWriteCore API, which is a reimplementation of the Windows DirectWrite API. Select items from the Scenario menu to see pages that demonstrate various API functionality.
DWriteCore is a low-level API for formatting and rendering text. It's a nano-COM API, meaning that it uses COM-style interfaces (derived from IUnknown), but it doesn't actually use the COM run-time. It's therefore not necessary to call CoCreateInstance before using DWriteCore. Instead, call the DWriteCreateFactory function to create a factory object (IDWriteFactory7), and then call factory methods to create other objects or perform other actions.
The text layout API is the highest layer of the DWriteCore API. It includes text format objects (IDWriteTextFormat4), which encapsulate formatting properties, and text layout objects (IDWriteTextLayout4), which represent formatted text strings. A text layout object exposes methods for drawing, getting metrics, hit-testing, and so on. Paragraphs displayed within the running sample app are text layout objects.
The font API exposes information about fonts and provides functionality needed for text layout and rendering. It includes font collection objects (IDWriteFontCollection3), which are collections of fonts grouped into families, font set objects (IDWriteFontSet3), which are flat collections of fonts, and font face objects (IDWriteFontFace6), which represent specific fonts.
The text rendering API provides interfaces uses for rendering text. When you call a text layout object's Draw method, it calls back to an interface (IDWriteTextRenderer1), which must be implemented by the application or by some other library. The use of an abstract callback interface enables DWriteCore to be decoupled from any particular graphics engine. The text renderer implementation can use text rendering APIs provided by DWriteCore to help with rendering glyphs. The TextRenderer class in this application provides a sample implementation of the IDWriteTextRenderer1 interface.
The text analysis API provides low-level APIs for sophisticated applications that implement their own text layout engines. This includes script analysis, bi-directional analysis, shaping, and so on.
- See System requirements for Windows app development.
- Make sure that your development environment is set up correctly—see Install tools for developing apps for Windows 10 and Windows 11.
-
Open the solution file (
.sln) in Visual Studio. -
Press Ctrl+Shift+B, or select Build > Build Solution.
Note: When building the solution, if you get an error related to a PowerShell command:
The command "powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -file ..." exited with code 1.
You will need to manually run that PowerShell command to build. Copy the full PowerShell command inside the quotes of the error message and paste it into a command prompt. -
Set "DWriteCoreGallery (packaging)" as the startup project. Right click "DWriteCoreGallery (packaging)" and select "set as startup project" from the context menu.
-
For debugging, it is recommended you change the debugger type for the "DWriteCoreGallery (packaging)" project to "Native Only". In the project properties, select the "Debug" tab, and set the Debugger type for both "Application process" and "Background task process" to "Native Only".