Technically that is feasible. Yes, speed of parsing will be slightly lower.
Problem is that it makes sense for Far East and some Indian fonts. For the rest this feature is a bit doubtful.

I suspect that for particular situation you have some simple preprocessor would be just enough. It should convert text into spans with needed font styling. I do not like such solutions in general but this could be implemented pretty easy.

it would be very neat and useful if we were able to specify a WPF-like composite font for unicode ranges. like: Font1 #00-FF, Font2 #xxxx-xxxx

not sure how feasible this would be; and what it would mean for performance...

These are very good news, thank you. Is it much to ask when will be the next build?
Can't wait to play with the new version.

I will add explicit settings for font smoothing in the next build.

enum HTMLAYOUT_OPTIONS
{
   HTMLAYOUT_SMOOTH_SCROLL = 1, // value:TRUE - enable, value:FALSE - disable, enabled by default
   HTMLAYOUT_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT = 2, // value: milliseconds, connection timeout of http client
   HTMLAYOUT_HTTPS_ERROR = 3, // value: 0 - drop connection, 1 - use builtin dialog, 2 - accept connection silently
   HTMLAYOUT_FONT_SMOOTHING = 4, // value: 0 - system default, 1 - no smoothing, 2 - std smoothing, 3 - clear type
};

EXTERN_C BOOL HLAPI HTMLayoutSetOption(HWND hWndHTMLayout, UINT option, UINT value );

But this option will be active for the whole process as I am using static font table.

Antialiasing is a must on some screens. Would be nice to have a property or extra parameter (depends of the implementation) where we might choose for font quality. On my screen looks much better clear type. The code is something like this:

...
LOGFONT lf;
memset(&lf, 0, sizeof(LOGFONT));
HFONT hFontOld, hFontNew;
....
GetObject(hFontOld,sizeof(LOGFONT),&lf);
....
int nOldSmooth;
SystemParametersInfo(SPI_GETFONTSMOOTHINGCONTRAST, 0, &nOldSmooth, FALSE);

GetObject(hFontOld,sizeof(LOGFONT),&lf); //not necessary if you have already LOGFONT structure

lf.lfQuality = CLEARTYPE_QUALITY; //for me at least, but can be also others

int nSmooth = 2200; //this is also adjustable
SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHINGCONTRAST, 0, &nSmooth, FALSE);

hFontNew = CreateFontIndirect(&lf);
hFontOld = (HFONT) SelectObject(hdc, hFontNew);

DrawText(...
TextOut(...
ExtTextOut(...

SelectObject(hdc, hFontOld);
DeleteObject(hFontNew);
SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHINGCONTRAST, 0, &nOldSmooth, FALSE);

Well, generally, I don't like cleartype. But the reason I am requesting this features is because in my actual app, the font I use is more readable in cleartype than standard smoothing or no smoothing, but when I use SystemParametersInfoA to set the smoothing system wide to cleartype (SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHING,SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHINGTYPE) it just won't work on my machine. It is enabling the smoothing, but only the standard one and not cleartype. So maybe it is appropriate to be able to explicitly set the smoothing to cleartype. It just depends on the actual fonts how they will look... Some look better with no AA, some look better with cleartype, etc... It also depends on the size. So to the queston:

> I do not see scenarios when you need explicit cleartype settings. Am I wrong?

I think that specific cleartype option will be useful.

imho we do not need cleartype while doing animation - it is waste of time (especially on PDA) but - now wince build already disables cleartype in animation (may be it is a bug, not feature, but it is very useful bug :)

Oh, forgot about this completely...
Thanks, Dmitry.

To bobef:
...thinking of how to provide settings for switching this.
So far Windows supports two font smoothing technologies: standard antialiasing and cleartype. As far as I understand you need these three values:

0) system default smoothing.
1) no-smoothing.
2) standard smoothing.

I do not see scenarios when you need explicit cleartype settings. Am I wrong?

May be it is about ANTIALIASED_QUALITY/NONANTIALIASED_QUALITY and CLEARTYPE_QUALITY in CreateFont...

Font smoothing in Windows is a system wide setting as far as I know.
If you will find how to set it for single process only then you can do such fine control on your side.
Just in case: I am using ::ScriptTextOut and ::TextOut functions to draw text.

Hi,

this is a feature request for antialiasing. Although it could be turned on using the Win32 API, it would be nice if one had a finer control and could enable it only for HTMLayout, instead for the whole system.

Thanks,
bobef

First of all standard CSS used to have such feature as:

@font-face
{
    src:url(\"assets/bkant.ttf\");
    fontFamily: BookAntiqua;
/*  unicodeRange: U+0041-U+007F */
}

CSS 2.0: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#font-descriptions
But it was removed from CSS 2.1
(but added again in CSS3: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-webfonts/#font-descriptions)

Currently it is supported only by IE and Safari(?)

In any case...

Installation of fonts from remote sources is far beyond from the scope of embeddable HTML/CSS engine and I am not going to support this in HTMLayout.

If needed you can do this on your side easily. Put needed fonts in e.g. resources or files nearby and call ::AddFontResourceEx with required flags.

OK, then consider this a feature request/suggestion:

.myclass
{
font-family: url(myfont.ttf);
}

Then this request can go to HLN_LOAD_DATA and so on...

htmlayout uses *only* fonts that are installed in the system already. No font installation/downloads happen.

And yet:

- htmlayout does not modify any system settings and folders;
- htmlayout does not use Windows Registry directly and is not modifying it;
- htmlayout does not create any files on host machine (single exception: for loading remote cursor files it may create temporary file in temp folders)
- *all* requests for remote data are sent first to the host application by HLN_LOAD_DATA notification.

That are basic requirements of embeddable engine and HTMLayout follows them strictly.

Hi,

is there some way I can sort of embed fonts. Say I need some not-so-popular language in my app. How should I provide it to the user if I don't have the rights to install it in the OS? Would some thing like this work: .myfont{font-fimily:"myfont.ttf";}
Or can I intercept loading of fonts?

Thanks,
bobef

<font> is strictly inline element by specification and <hr> is a block element.
When parser gets block element inside some inline it unconditionally closes all open inline elements. In this case this <font> will be closed before parsing of <hr>.

I have this problem with the HTMLLayout component.

With the following sintax:
<FONT size=4>
<HR>
<FONT face=Arial> ... example text ... </FONT>
</FONT>

I have one wrong renderizzazione.

Address with Example file html:
http://www.prometeo.com/italian/download/file/FONT_Documento.Html
List Image with problem simulation:
http://www.prometeo.com/italian/download/file/FONT_Browser.JPG
http://www.prometeo.com/italian/download/file/FONT_HTMLLayout.JPG

Help me.
Thank's