Scrollbars, Trackbars and fonts

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Scrollbars, Trackbars and fonts
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Project - Font-erator

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Project - Font-erator

This program is a simple utility that allows the user to examine what any piece of text looks like in any font and any point size.

Although there are many ways in which this could be achieved the opportunity to use scroll bars to control both point size and font type is appropriate given the main topic or this article! However to make things look a little more natural we can use a control that is closely related to the ScrollBar - the TrackBar. This has most of the same properties, methods and events as the ScrollBar but it looks more like a slider that can be used to control something general.

The use of a Trackbar to control point size isn't particularly novel but controlling font type via a Trackbar is a bit more unusual.

Starting at the beginning. You need a new form complete with four labels, one large text box and two horizontal TrackBars.

Font1

The first task is to set the Trackbars to produce an appropriate range of values.

TrackBar1, which controls the point size, can be simply set to a reasonable range e.g. 1 to 40.

The biggest problem is what to set the scroll bar that controls the font type to?

The solution is to use the FontFamilies object which lists all of the types of Font you can use. This has a Families property which returns a list of all the types and a Length property that tells you the number of types.

To initialise the TrackBars the form load event handler is used -

Private Sub Form1_Load(
   ByVal sender As System.Object, 
   ByVal e As System.EventArgs) 
                Handles MyBase.Load
 TrackBar1.Maximum = 40
 TrackBar1.Minimum = 1
 TrackBar1.Value = 12
 TrackBar2.Maximum = _
         FontFamily.Families.Length - 1
 TrackBar2.Minimum = 0
 TrackBar2.Value = 1
 TextBox1.Text = _
              "This is some sample text"
 TextBox1.Font = New Font( _
     FontFamily.Families( _
      TrackBar2.Value), TrackBar1.Value)
End Sub

Notice that we set the TrackBars to reasonable values and then set the TextBox to the current font. To do this we have to create a Font object of the correct type - i.e. Font Family and size.

If the user changes either of the TrackBar positions we have to create new font object according to the settings. So we need a single event handler for both TrackBars - as it doesn't matter which TrackBar caused the event we have to do the same set of actions:

Private Sub TrackBar_Scroll(
    ByVal sender As System.Object, 
    ByVal e As System.EventArgs) 
  Handles TrackBar1.Scroll, TrackBar2.Scroll
 Dim Family As FontFamily = 
   FontFamily.Families(TrackBar2.Value)
 If (Family.IsStyleAvailable(
             FontStyle.Regular)) Then
  Dim F As New Font(Family, TrackBar1.Value)
  TextBox1.Font = F
  Label2.Text = F.SizeInPoints
  Label4.Text = F.Name
 End If
End Sub

This routine is quite complicated.

To set it to serve both events use the Properties window and select the name of the routine in the event tab for each of the events.

First it creates a new FontFamily object which corresponds to the current setting of TrackBar2.

Now we come to a complication.

Not all font types support all styles and we are by default going to display only Regular style - i.e.not italic, bold etc. We could add a slider for style type but in this case to be simple we check that the font supports Regular. If it does then the text is displayed using it. If it doesn't then nothing happens.

Not idea but easy to implement.

As long as the FontFamily support Regular style (most do) we next create the Font object at the correct size and set the TextBox Font property to use it. Finally we set the labels to the font size and the font name.

Once you have finished typing in the code you can try this font examiner out. It isn't wonderfully useful but it does demonstrate how TrackBars can be used in slightly more creative ways.

Font2

Notice that you have also taken a first look at the way that fonts work. If you want to take this application a little further you might like to add bold and italic as possible additional selections. Of course the range of fonts that you see will depend on what you actually have installed on your machine.

To access the complete project, once you have registered, click on CodeBin.

This is the sixth chapter of the ebook Master Visual Basic 2010.

Project - Font-erator

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