.NET FontManager – a Freely Available Software Library to Support Font Formats

We are all familiar with that situation in software development: code is written, everything is working fine, except some small but vital detail that needs your attention – font. You have non-standard or commercial font that Windows wants to substitute. And now you need to think about how to work with it, how to distribute it and how to keep windows font substitution hands out of your font. The issue is getting escalated if you are working on .NET or ASP.NET.

One of the quickest decisions that might come to you is to purchase the TrueType font format. But we have a better solution for you!

We created .NET FontManager, which is an intellectual wrapper over the FreeType2 open source library that uses GPLv2 as the original library. With the help of .NET FontManager you can use the common type of font files, get contours of every glyph and draw them as you need. The library is rather simple and all you need to know about fonts internals is that they are low-level.

Technically, it works through freetype2 version 2.5 and supports all fonts from this library. It means that instead of playing with low C code you can work with .NET and operate with pure .NET abstractions. OpenType, CID fonts, Type1 are handled by freetype2 and hold glyphs in vector.

For the sake of usability, we have added bindings to popular .NET library – OxyPlot. The typical appliance will look like:

All fonts are handled by .Net FontManager and stored in SVG font format.

So, all you need is to bring everything with your application, use it from your private folder and it will work in an excellent manner: the proper look, the proper feel and no interference with other fonts and programs. Easy distribution is also important. When you work with font files you know the proper font all the time and errors in font metadata will not bring you any trouble. Just use contents and add any “font name” to it according to your needs. Every number and every curve are available through .NET FontManager!

More details and free download are on the product page.