wx.Font

A font is an object which determines the appearance of text.

Fonts are used for drawing text to a device context, and setting the appearance of a window’s text, see wx.DC.SetFont and wx.Window.SetFont .

The easiest way to create a custom font is to use wx.FontInfo object to specify the font attributes and then use Font.__init__ constructor. Alternatively, you could start with one of the pre-defined fonts or use wx.Window.GetFont and modify the font, e.g. by increasing its size using MakeLarger or changing its weight using MakeBold.

This class uses reference counting and copy-on-write internally so that assignments between two instances of this class are very cheap. You can therefore use actual objects instead of pointers without efficiency problems. If an instance of this class is changed it will create its own data internally so that other instances, which previously shared the data using the reference counting, are not affected.

You can retrieve the current system font settings with wx.SystemSettings.

See also

Font Overview, wx.DC.SetFont , wx.DC.DrawText , wx.DC.GetTextExtent , wx.FontDialog, wx.SystemSettings

Class Hierarchy

Inheritance diagram for class Font:

Methods Summary

__init__	Default constructor.
Bold	Returns a bold version of this font.
GetDefaultEncoding	Returns the current application’s default encoding.
GetEncoding	Returns the encoding of this font.
GetFaceName	Returns the face name associated with the font, or the empty string if there is no face information.
GetFamily	Gets the font family if possible.
GetHFONT	Returns the font’s native handle.
GetNativeFontInfo	Returns the encoding of this font.
GetNativeFontInfoDesc	Returns the platform-dependent string completely describing this font.
GetNativeFontInfoUserDesc	Returns a user-friendly string for this font object.
GetPangoFontDescription	Returns the font’s native handle.
GetPixelSize	Gets the pixel size.
GetPointSize	Gets the point size.
GetStrikethrough	Returns True if the font is stricken-through, False otherwise.
GetStyle	Gets the font style.
GetUnderlined	Returns True if the font is underlined, False otherwise.
GetWeight	Gets the font weight.
IsFixedWidth	Returns True if the font is a fixed width (or monospaced) font, False if it is a proportional one or font is invalid.
IsOk	Returns True if this object is a valid font, False otherwise.
Italic	Returns an italic version of this font.
Larger	Returns a larger version of this font.
MakeBold	Changes this font to be bold.
MakeItalic	Changes this font to be italic.
MakeLarger	Changes this font to be larger.
MakeSmaller	Changes this font to be smaller.
MakeStrikethrough	Changes this font to be stricken-through.
MakeUnderlined	Changes this font to be underlined.
New	This function takes the same parameters as the relative Font constructor and returns a new font object allocated on the heap.
OSXGetCGFont	Returns the font’s native handle.
Scale	Changes the size of this font.
Scaled	Returns a scaled version of this font.
SetDefaultEncoding	Sets the default font encoding.
SetEncoding	Sets the encoding for this font.
SetFaceName	Sets the facename for the font.
SetFamily	Sets the font family.
SetNativeFontInfo	Creates the font corresponding to the given native font description string which must have been previously returned by GetNativeFontInfoDesc .
SetNativeFontInfoUserDesc	Creates the font corresponding to the given native font description string and returns True if the creation was successful.
SetPixelSize	Sets the pixel size.
SetPointSize	Sets the point size.
SetStrikethrough	Sets strike-through attribute of the font.
SetStyle	Sets the font style.
SetSymbolicSize	Sets the font size using a predefined symbolic size name.
SetSymbolicSizeRelativeTo	Sets the font size compared to the base font size.
SetUnderlined	Sets underlining.
SetWeight	Sets the font weight.
Smaller	Returns a smaller version of this font.
Strikethrough	Returns stricken-through version of this font.
Underlined	Returns underlined version of this font.
__nonzero__
_copyFrom	For internal use only.
__ne__	Inequality operator.
__eq__	Equality operator.

Properties Summary

Encoding	See GetEncoding and SetEncoding
FaceName	See GetFaceName and SetFaceName
Family	See GetFamily and SetFamily
NativeFontInfoDesc	See GetNativeFontInfoDesc and SetNativeFontInfo
NativeFontInfoUserDesc	See GetNativeFontInfoUserDesc and SetNativeFontInfoUserDesc
PixelSize	See GetPixelSize and SetPixelSize
PointSize	See GetPointSize and SetPointSize
Style	See GetStyle and SetStyle
Weight	See GetWeight and SetWeight

Class API

---

class wx.Font(GDIObject)

Possible constructors:

Font()

Font(font)

Font(fontInfo)

Font(pointSize, family, style, weight, underline=False,
     faceName="", encoding=FONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

Font(pixelSize, family, style, weight, underline=False,
     faceName="", encoding=FONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

Font(nativeInfoString)

Font(nativeInfo)

A font is an object which determines the appearance of text.

Methods

---

__init__(self, *args, **kw)

Overloaded Implementations:

---

__init__ (self)

Default constructor.

---

__init__ (self, font)

Copy constructor, uses reference counting.

Parameters:font (wx.Font) –

---

__init__ (self, fontInfo)

Creates a font object using the specified font description.

This is the preferred way to create font objects as using this constructor results in more readable code and it is also extensible, e.g. it could continue to be used if support for more font attributes is added in the future. For example, this constructor provides the only way of creating fonts with strike-through style.

Example of creating a font using this constructor:

# Create a font using wx.FontInfo
font = wx.Font( wx.FontInfo(10).Bold().Underline() )

Parameters:fontInfo (wx.FontInfo) –

New in version 2.9.5.

---

__init__ (self, pointSize, family, style, weight, underline=False, faceName=””, encoding=FONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

Creates a font object with the specified attributes and size in points.

Notice that the use of this constructor is often more verbose and less readable than the use of constructor from wx.FontInfo, e.g. the example in that constructor documentation would need to be written as

# Create a font using the old-style constructor
font = wx.Font(10, wx.FONTFAMILY_DEFAULT, wx.FONTSTYLE_NORMAL, wx.FONTWEIGHT_BOLD, True)

which is longer and less clear.

Parameters:

• pointSize (int) – Size in points. See SetPointSize for more info.
• family (FontFamily) – The font family: a generic portable way of referring to fonts without specifying a facename. This parameter must be one of the wx.FontFamily enumeration values. If the faceName argument is provided, then it overrides the font family.
• style (FontStyle) – One of FONTSTYLE_NORMAL , FONTSTYLE_SLANT and FONTSTYLE_ITALIC .
• weight (FontWeight) – Font weight, sometimes also referred to as font boldness. One of the wx.FontWeight enumeration values.
• underline (bool) – The value can be True or False. At present this has an effect on Windows and Motif 2.x only.
• faceName (string) – An optional string specifying the face name to be used. If it is an empty string, a default face name will be chosen based on the family.
• encoding (FontEncoding) – An encoding which may be one of the enumeration values of wx.FontEncoding. Briefly these can be summed up as:

  FONTENCODING_SYSTEM	Default system encoding.
  FONTENCODING_DEFAULT	Default application encoding: this is the encoding set by calls to SetDefaultEncoding and which may be set to, say, KOI8 to create all fonts by default with KOI8 encoding. Initially, the default application encoding is the same as default system encoding.
  FONTENCODING_ISO8859_1 ...15	ISO8859 encodings.
  FONTENCODING_KOI8	The standard Russian encoding for Internet.
  FONTENCODING_CP1250 ...1252	Windows encodings similar to ISO8859 (but not identical).

  
  

  If the specified encoding isn’t available, no font is created (see also Font Encodings).

Note

If the desired font does not exist, the closest match will be chosen. Under Windows, only scalable TrueType fonts are used.

---

__init__ (self, pixelSize, family, style, weight, underline=False, faceName=””, encoding=FONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

Creates a font object with the specified attributes and size in pixels.

Notice that the use of this constructor is often more verbose and less readable than the use of constructor from wx.FontInfo, consider using that constructor instead.

Parameters:

• pixelSize (wx.Size) – Size in pixels. See SetPixelSize for more info.
• family (FontFamily) – The font family: a generic portable way of referring to fonts without specifying a facename. This parameter must be one of the wx.FontFamily enumeration values. If the faceName argument is provided, then it overrides the font family.
• style (FontStyle) – One of FONTSTYLE_NORMAL , FONTSTYLE_SLANT and FONTSTYLE_ITALIC .
• weight (FontWeight) – Font weight, sometimes also referred to as font boldness. One of the wx.FontWeight enumeration values.
• underline (bool) – The value can be True or False. At present this has an effect on Windows and Motif 2.x only.
• faceName (string) – An optional string specifying the face name to be used. If it is an empty string, a default face name will be chosen based on the family.
• encoding (FontEncoding) – An encoding which may be one of the enumeration values of wx.FontEncoding. Briefly these can be summed up as:

  FONTENCODING_SYSTEM	Default system encoding.
  FONTENCODING_DEFAULT	Default application encoding: this is the encoding set by calls to SetDefaultEncoding and which may be set to, say, KOI8 to create all fonts by default with KOI8 encoding. Initially, the default application encoding is the same as default system encoding.
  FONTENCODING_ISO8859_1 ...15	ISO8859 encodings.
  FONTENCODING_KOI8	The standard Russian encoding for Internet.
  FONTENCODING_CP1250 ...1252	Windows encodings similar to ISO8859 (but not identical).

  
  

  If the specified encoding isn’t available, no font is created (see also Font Encodings).

Note

If the desired font does not exist, the closest match will be chosen. Under Windows, only scalable TrueType fonts are used.

---

__init__ (self, nativeInfoString)

Constructor from font description string.

This constructor uses SetNativeFontInfo to initialize the font. If fontdesc is invalid the font remains uninitialized, i.e. its IsOk method will return False.

Parameters:nativeInfoString (string) –

---

__init__ (self, nativeInfo)

Construct font from a native font info structure.

Parameters:nativeInfo (wx.NativeFontInfo) –

---

---

Bold(self)

Returns a bold version of this font.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

MakeBold

---

static GetDefaultEncoding()

Returns the current application’s default encoding.

Return type: wx.FontEncoding

See also

Font Encodings, SetDefaultEncoding

---

GetEncoding(self)

Returns the encoding of this font.

Note that under wxGTK the returned value is always FONTENCODING_UTF8 .

Return type: wx.FontEncoding

See also

SetEncoding

---

GetFaceName(self)

Returns the face name associated with the font, or the empty string if there is no face information.

Return type:string

See also

SetFaceName

---

GetFamily(self)

Gets the font family if possible.

As described in wx.FontFamily docs the returned value acts as a rough, basic classification of the main font properties (look, spacing).

If the current font face name is not recognized by wx.Font or by the underlying system, FONTFAMILY_DEFAULT is returned.

Note that currently this function is not very precise and so not particularly useful. Font families mostly make sense only for font creation, see SetFamily .

Return type: wx.FontFamily

See also

SetFamily

---

GetHFONT(self)

Returns the font’s native handle.

---

GetNativeFontInfo(self)

Returns the encoding of this font.

Note that under wxGTK the returned value is always FONTENCODING_UTF8 .

Return type: wx.NativeFontInfo

See also

SetEncoding

---

GetNativeFontInfoDesc(self)

Returns the platform-dependent string completely describing this font.

Returned string is always non-empty unless the font is invalid (in which case an assert is triggered).

Note that the returned string is not meant to be shown or edited by the user: a typical use of this function is for serializing in string-form a wx.Font object.

Return type:string

See also

SetNativeFontInfo , GetNativeFontInfoUserDesc

---

GetNativeFontInfoUserDesc(self)

Returns a user-friendly string for this font object.

Returned string is always non-empty unless the font is invalid (in which case an assert is triggered).

The string does not encode all wx.Font infos under all platforms; e.g. under wxMSW the font family is not present in the returned string.

Some examples of the formats of returned strings (which are platform-dependent) are in SetNativeFontInfoUserDesc .

Return type:string

See also

SetNativeFontInfoUserDesc , GetNativeFontInfoDesc

---

GetPangoFontDescription(self)

Returns the font’s native handle.

---

GetPixelSize(self)

Gets the pixel size.

Note that under wxMSW if you passed to SetPixelSize (or to the constructor) a wx.Size object with a null width value, you’ll get a null width in the returned object.

Return type: wx.Size

See also

SetPixelSize

---

GetPointSize(self)

Gets the point size.

Return type:int

See also

SetPointSize

---

GetStrikethrough(self)

Returns True if the font is stricken-through, False otherwise.

Return type:bool

New in version 2.9.4.

See also

SetStrikethrough

---

GetStyle(self)

Gets the font style.

See wx.FontStyle for a list of valid styles.

Return type: wx.FontStyle

See also

SetStyle

---

GetUnderlined(self)

Returns True if the font is underlined, False otherwise.

Return type:bool

See also

SetUnderlined

---

GetWeight(self)

Gets the font weight.

See wx.FontWeight for a list of valid weight identifiers.

Return type: wx.FontWeight

See also

SetWeight

---

IsFixedWidth(self)

Returns True if the font is a fixed width (or monospaced) font, False if it is a proportional one or font is invalid.

Note that this function under some platforms is different than just testing for the font family being equal to FONTFAMILY_TELETYPE because native platform-specific functions are used for the check (resulting in a more accurate return value).

Return type:bool

---

IsOk(self)

Returns True if this object is a valid font, False otherwise.

Return type:bool

---

Italic(self)

Returns an italic version of this font.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

MakeItalic

---

Larger(self)

Returns a larger version of this font.

The font size is multiplied by 1.2 , the factor of 1.2 being inspired by the W3C CSS specification.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

MakeLarger , Smaller , Scaled

---

MakeBold(self)

Changes this font to be bold.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

Bold

---

MakeItalic(self)

Changes this font to be italic.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

Italic

---

MakeLarger(self)

Changes this font to be larger.

The font size is multiplied by 1.2 , the factor of 1.2 being inspired by the W3C CSS specification.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

Larger , MakeSmaller , Scale

---

MakeSmaller(self)

Changes this font to be smaller.

The font size is divided by 1.2 , the factor of 1.2 being inspired by the W3C CSS specification.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

Smaller , MakeLarger , Scale

---

MakeStrikethrough(self)

Changes this font to be stricken-through.

Currently stricken-through fonts are only supported in wxMSW and wxGTK.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.4.

See also

Strikethrough

---

MakeUnderlined(self)

Changes this font to be underlined.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.2.

See also

Underlined

---

static New(*args, **kw)

This function takes the same parameters as the relative Font constructor and returns a new font object allocated on the heap.

Their use is discouraged, use wx.Font constructor from wx.FontInfo instead.

Overloaded Implementations:

---

New (pointSize, family, style, weight, underline=False, faceName=””, encoding=FONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

Parameters:

• pointSize (int) –
• family (FontFamily) –
• style (FontStyle) –
• weight (FontWeight) –
• underline (bool) –
• faceName (string) –
• encoding (FontEncoding) –

Return type:

wx.Font

---

New (pointSize, family, flags=FONTFLAG_DEFAULT, faceName=””, encoding=FONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

Parameters:

• pointSize (int) –
• family (FontFamily) –
• flags (int) –
• faceName (string) –
• encoding (FontEncoding) –

Return type:

wx.Font

---

New (pixelSize, family, style, weight, underline=False, faceName=””, encoding=FONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

Parameters:

• pixelSize (wx.Size) –
• family (FontFamily) –
• style (FontStyle) –
• weight (FontWeight) –
• underline (bool) –
• faceName (string) –
• encoding (FontEncoding) –

Return type:

wx.Font

---

New (pixelSize, family, flags=FONTFLAG_DEFAULT, faceName=””, encoding=FONTENCODING_DEFAULT)

Parameters:

• pixelSize (wx.Size) –
• family (FontFamily) –
• flags (int) –
• faceName (string) –
• encoding (FontEncoding) –

Return type:

wx.Font

---

New (nativeInfo)

Parameters:nativeInfo (wx.NativeFontInfo) – Return type: wx.Font

---

New (nativeInfoString)

Parameters:nativeInfoString (string) – Return type: wx.Font

---

---

OSXGetCGFont(self)

Returns the font’s native handle.

---

Scale(self, x)

Changes the size of this font.

The font size is multiplied by the given factor (which may be less than 1 to create a smaller version of the font).

Parameters:x (float) – Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

Scaled , MakeLarger , MakeSmaller

---

Scaled(self, x)

Returns a scaled version of this font.

The font size is multiplied by the given factor (which may be less than 1 to create a smaller version of the font).

Parameters:x (float) – Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

Scale , Larger , Smaller

---

static SetDefaultEncoding(encoding)

Sets the default font encoding.

Parameters:encoding (FontEncoding) –

See also

Font Encodings, GetDefaultEncoding

---

SetEncoding(self, encoding)

Sets the encoding for this font.

Note that under wxGTK this function has no effect (because the underlying Pango library always uses FONTENCODING_UTF8 ).

Parameters:encoding (FontEncoding) –

See also

GetEncoding

---

SetFaceName(self, faceName)

Sets the facename for the font.

Parameters:faceName (string) – A valid facename, which should be on the end-user’s system. Return type:bool Returns:True if the given face name exists; if the face name doesn’t exist in the user’s system then the font is invalidated (so that IsOk will return False) and False is returned.

Note

To avoid portability problems, don’t rely on a specific face, but specify the font family instead (see wx.FontFamily and SetFamily ).

See also

GetFaceName , SetFamily

---

SetFamily(self, family)

Sets the font family.

As described in wx.FontFamily docs the given family value acts as a rough, basic indication of the main font properties (look, spacing).

Note that changing the font family results in changing the font face name.

Parameters:family (FontFamily) – One of the wx.FontFamily values.

See also

GetFamily , SetFaceName

---

SetNativeFontInfo(self, *args, **kw)

Overloaded Implementations:

---

SetNativeFontInfo (self, info)

Creates the font corresponding to the given native font description string which must have been previously returned by GetNativeFontInfoDesc .

If the string is invalid, font is unchanged. This function is typically used for de-serializing a wx.Font object previously saved in a string-form.

Parameters:info (string) – Return type:bool Returns:True if the creation was successful.

See also

SetNativeFontInfoUserDesc

---

SetNativeFontInfo (self, info)

Sets the encoding for this font.

Note that under wxGTK this function has no effect (because the underlying Pango library always uses FONTENCODING_UTF8 ).

Parameters:info (wx.NativeFontInfo) –

See also

GetEncoding

---

---

SetNativeFontInfoUserDesc(self, info)

Creates the font corresponding to the given native font description string and returns True if the creation was successful.

Unlike SetNativeFontInfo , this function accepts strings which are user-friendly. Examples of accepted string formats are:

platform	generic syntax	example
wxGTK2	[underlined] [strikethrough] [FACE-NAME] [bold] [oblique|italic] [POINTSIZE]	Monospace bold 10
wxMSW	[light|bold] [italic] [FACE-NAME] [POINTSIZE] [ENCODING]	Tahoma 10 WINDOWS-1252

For more detailed information about the allowed syntaxes you can look at the documentation of the native API used for font-rendering (e.g. pango_font_description_from_string under GTK, although notice that it doesn’t support the “underlined” and “strikethrough” attributes and so those are handled by wxWidgets itself).

Note that unlike SetNativeFontInfo , this function doesn’t always restore all attributes of the wx.Font object under all platforms; e.g. on wxMSW the font family is not restored (because GetNativeFontInfoUserDesc doesn’t return it on wxMSW). If you want to serialize/deserialize a font in string form, you should use GetNativeFontInfoDesc and SetNativeFontInfo instead.

Parameters:info (string) – Return type:bool

See also

SetNativeFontInfo

Todo

add an example for Mac

---

SetPixelSize(self, pixelSize)

Sets the pixel size.

The height parameter of pixelSize must be positive while the width parameter may also be zero (to indicate that you’re not interested in the width of the characters: a suitable width will be chosen for best rendering).

This feature (specifying the font pixel size) is directly supported only under wxMSW and wxGTK currently; under other platforms a font with the closest size to the given one is found using binary search (this maybe slower).

Parameters:pixelSize (wx.Size) –

See also

GetPixelSize

---

SetPointSize(self, pointSize)

Sets the point size.

The point size is defined as 1/72 of the Anglo-Saxon inch (25.4 mm): it is approximately 0.0139 inch or 352.8 um.

Parameters:pointSize (int) – Size in points.

See also

GetPointSize

---

SetStrikethrough(self, strikethrough)

Sets strike-through attribute of the font.

Currently stricken-through fonts are only supported in wxMSW and wxGTK.

Parameters:strikethrough (bool) – True to add strike-through style, False to remove it.

New in version 2.9.4.

See also

GetStrikethrough

---

SetStyle(self, style)

Sets the font style.

Parameters:style (FontStyle) – One of the wx.FontStyle enumeration values.

See also

GetStyle

---

SetSymbolicSize(self, size)

Sets the font size using a predefined symbolic size name.

This function allows to change font size to be (very) large or small compared to the standard font size.

Parameters:size (FontSymbolicSize) –

New in version 2.9.2.

See also

SetSymbolicSizeRelativeTo .

---

SetSymbolicSizeRelativeTo(self, size, base)

Sets the font size compared to the base font size.

This is the same as SetSymbolicSize except that it uses the given font size as the normal font size instead of the standard font size.

Parameters:

• size (FontSymbolicSize) –
• base (int) –

New in version 2.9.2.

---

SetUnderlined(self, underlined)

Sets underlining.

Parameters:underlined (bool) – True to underline, False otherwise.

See also

GetUnderlined

---

SetWeight(self, weight)

Sets the font weight.

Parameters:weight (FontWeight) – One of the wx.FontWeight values.

See also

GetWeight

---

Smaller(self)

Returns a smaller version of this font.

The font size is divided by 1.2 , the factor of 1.2 being inspired by the W3C CSS specification.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.1.

See also

MakeSmaller , Larger , Scaled

---

Strikethrough(self)

Returns stricken-through version of this font.

Currently stricken-through fonts are only supported in wxMSW and wxGTK.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.4.

See also

MakeStrikethrough

---

Underlined(self)

Returns underlined version of this font.

Return type: wx.Font

New in version 2.9.2.

See also

MakeUnderlined

---

__nonzero__(self)

Return type:int

---

_copyFrom(self, other)

For internal use only.

---

__ne__(self)

Inequality operator.

See reference-counted object comparison for more info.

Parameters:font (wx.Font) –

---

__eq__(self)

Equality operator.

See reference-counted object comparison for more info.

Parameters:font (wx.Font) –

Properties

---

Encoding

See GetEncoding and SetEncoding

---

FaceName

See GetFaceName and SetFaceName

---

Family

See GetFamily and SetFamily

---

NativeFontInfoDesc

See GetNativeFontInfoDesc and SetNativeFontInfo

---

NativeFontInfoUserDesc

See GetNativeFontInfoUserDesc and SetNativeFontInfoUserDesc

---

PixelSize

See GetPixelSize and SetPixelSize

---

PointSize

See GetPointSize and SetPointSize

---

Style

See GetStyle and SetStyle

---

Weight

See GetWeight and SetWeight