Importing Font to GUI

Question

I am trying to change the font for my GUI besides the basic 5 that swing seems to come with. How to import fonts and actually use them in my code?

Answer 1

There are usually more than 5 available by default, but they change from system to system. This answer examines both the existing fonts, as well as how to load & register new fonts.

It uses the 'Airacobra Condensed' font available from Download Free Fonts (obtained by hot-link URL). A font that is in the Jar of your app. is also accessible by URL.

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.net.URL;

class LoadFont {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        // This font is < 35Kb.
        URL fontUrl = new URL("http://www.webpagepublicity.com/" +
            "free-fonts/a/Airacobra%20Condensed.ttf");
        Font font = Font.createFont(Font.TRUETYPE_FONT, fontUrl.openStream());
        GraphicsEnvironment ge = 
            GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
        ge.registerFont(font);
        JList fonts = new JList( ge.getAvailableFontFamilyNames() );
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, new JScrollPane(fonts));
    }
}

---

OK, that was fun, but what does this font actually look like?

import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.net.URL;

class DisplayFont {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        URL fontUrl = new URL("http://www.webpagepublicity.com/" +
            "free-fonts/a/Airacobra%20Condensed.ttf");
        Font font = Font.createFont(Font.TRUETYPE_FONT, fontUrl.openStream());
        font = font.deriveFont(Font.PLAIN,20);
        GraphicsEnvironment ge =
            GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();
        ge.registerFont(font);

        JLabel l = new JLabel(
            "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. 0123456789");
        l.setFont(font);
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, l);
    }
}

Answer 2

Here is a way to load fonts that are packed in a jar file + an xml file to read out the font size, font name & font filename:

1) FontLibrary class:

package be.nicholas.font.loading;

import java.awt.Font;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;

import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;

import be.nicholas.font.CustomFont;
import be.nicholas.utils.Logger;
import be.nicholas.utils.Misc;

public class FontLibrary {

    public static Map<String, Font> fonts = null;
    private static Logger logger = Logger.getInstance();

    public FontLibrary() { }

    /**
     * Get the font by it's name.
     * @param fontname the font name
     * @return The font for the given id if it exists.
     */
    public static Font getFont(String fontname)
    {
        Font f = FontLibrary.fonts.get(fontname);
        if(f == null)
        logger.error("Font ("+fontname+") could not be found.");
        return f;
    }


    /**
     * Get the font by it's name and change the fontsize
     * @param fontname the font name.
     * @param fontsize 
     * @return Font
     */
    public static Font getFont(String fontname, int fontsize)
    {
        Font f = FontLibrary.fonts.get(fontname).deriveFont((float) fontsize);
        if(f == null)
        logger.error("Font ("+fontname+") could not be found.");
        return f;
    }

    public static void load() 
    {
        try 
        {
            InputStream fontStream = FontLibrary.class.getResourceAsStream("/data/fonts/fonts.xml");
            DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
            DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
            Document doc = dBuilder.parse(fontStream);
            doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();

            NodeList nList = doc.getElementsByTagName("font");

            fonts = new HashMap<String, Font>();
            logger.error("Starting to load fonts...");
            for (int temp = 0; temp < nList.getLength(); temp++) 
            {
               Node nNode = nList.item(temp);
               if (nNode.getNodeType() == Node.ELEMENT_NODE) 
               {
                  Element fontElement = (Element) nNode;

                  CustomFont f = new CustomFont();
                  f.setName(getTagValue("name", fontElement));
                  f.setFont(CustomFont.load(getTagValue("filename", fontElement), Integer.parseInt(getTagValue("fontsize", fontElement))));
                  f.setSize(Integer.parseInt(getTagValue("fontsize", fontElement)));

                  fonts.put(f.getName(), f.getFont());

                  /**
                   * Calculate percentage
                   */

                  int percent = Misc.getPercentage(fonts.size(), nList.getLength());
                  String msg = percent+"% of fonts loaded("+fonts.size()+" of "+nList.getLength()+")"; 


               }

            }


        } catch (Exception e) {
            logger.error("Error: "+e);

        }
        logger.error("All fonts loaded!"+"("+fonts.size()+" fonts int total).");
        //logger.info(fonts.size()+" = size of fontsmap. -> name ofzo: "+fonts.get("rssmall"));

    }


      private static String getTagValue(String sTag, Element eElement) 
      {
            NodeList nlList = eElement.getElementsByTagName(sTag).item(0).getChildNodes();
            Node nValue = (Node) nlList.item(0);
            return nValue.getNodeValue();
      }

}

2) CustomFont class:

package be.nicholas.font;

import java.awt.Font;
import java.io.InputStream;

import be.nicholas.font.loading.FontLibrary;
import be.nicholas.utils.Misc;

public class CustomFont {

    public String name;
    public Font fontObject;
    public int size;

    public CustomFont() {
        //super(font);

    }

    public void setFont(Font fontObject)
    {
        this.fontObject = fontObject;
    }

    public Font getFont()
    {
        return this.fontObject;
    }

    public void setName(String name)
    {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getName()
    {
        return this.name;
    }

    public void setSize(int size)
    {
        this.size = size;
    }

    public int getSize()
    {
        return this.size;
    }


    public static Font load(String filename,int fontSize)
    {
        InputStream fontStream = CustomFont.class.getResourceAsStream("/be/nicholas/fonts/"+filename);
        if (fontStream != null) 
        {
            try 
            {
                Font labelFont;
                labelFont = Font.createFont(Font.TRUETYPE_FONT, fontStream);
                labelFont = labelFont.deriveFont((float) fontSize);
                return labelFont;

            } catch (Exception e) 
            {
                System.out.println("error " + e);
            }

        } 
        return null;
    }

}

3) XML-structure:

<fonts>
    <font>
        <name>mycustomfontname</name>
        <filename>myfont.ttf</filename>
        <fontsize>16</fontsize>
    </font>
    <font>
        <name>champagne</name>
        <filename>ChampagneAndLimousines.ttf</filename>
        <fontsize>50</fontsize>
    </font>
</fonts>

4) Load the font:

JLabel label = new JLabel('testText');
//load it with the default given font size
label.setFont(FontLibrary.fonts.get("mycustomfontname"));
//load a font with a custom font size:
label.setFont(FontLibrary.fonts.get("mycustomfontname").deriveFont(22));

I hope this will help :)... I'm a real java novice, and I made this on my 5th day playing around with java, so it's far from perfect, but it will do the job

Answer 3

You can try with this:

Font font = Font.createFont(Font.TRUETYPE_FONT, fontStream);

Next,

GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment().registerFont(font);

And,

new Font("nameOfFont", Font.BOLD, 13)