FT_LOAD_FLAGS¶

A list of bit-field constants used with FT_Load_Glyph to indicate what kind of operations to perform during glyph loading.

FT_LOAD_DEFAULT¶

Corresponding to 0, this value is used as the default glyph load operation. In this case, the following happens:

FreeType looks for a bitmap for the glyph corresponding to the face’s current size. If one is found, the function returns. The bitmap data can be accessed from the glyph slot (see note below).
If no embedded bitmap is searched or found, FreeType looks for a scalable outline. If one is found, it is loaded from the font file, scaled to device pixels, then ‘hinted’ to the pixel grid in order to optimize it. The outline data can be accessed from the glyph slot (see note below).

Note that by default, the glyph loader doesn’t render outlines into bitmaps. The following flags are used to modify this default behaviour to more specific and useful cases.

FT_LOAD_NO_SCALE¶

Don’t scale the outline glyph loaded, but keep it in font units.

This flag implies FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING and FT_LOAD_NO_BITMAP, and unsets FT_LOAD_RENDER.

FT_LOAD_NO_HINTING¶

Disable hinting. This generally generates ‘blurrier’ bitmap glyph when the glyph is rendered in any of the anti-aliased modes. See also the note below.

This flag is implied by FT_LOAD_NO_SCALE.

FT_LOAD_RENDER¶

Call FT_Render_Glyph after the glyph is loaded. By default, the glyph is rendered in FT_RENDER_MODE_NORMAL mode. This can be overridden by FT_LOAD_TARGET_XXX or FT_LOAD_MONOCHROME.

This flag is unset by FT_LOAD_NO_SCALE.

FT_LOAD_NO_BITMAP¶

Ignore bitmap strikes when loading. Bitmap-only fonts ignore this flag.

FT_LOAD_NO_SCALE always sets this flag.

FT_LOAD_VERTICAL_LAYOUT¶: Load the glyph for vertical text layout. Don’t use it as it is problematic currently.

FT_LOAD_FORCE_AUTOHINT¶: Indicates that the auto-hinter is preferred over the font’s native hinter. See also the note below.

FT_LOAD_CROP_BITMAP¶: Indicates that the font driver should crop the loaded bitmap glyph (i.e., remove all space around its black bits). Not all drivers implement this.

FT_LOAD_PEDANTIC¶: Indicates that the font driver should perform pedantic verifications during glyph loading. This is mostly used to detect broken glyphs in fonts. By default, FreeType tries to handle broken fonts also.

FT_LOAD_IGNORE_GLOBAL_ADVANCE_WIDTH¶

Indicates that the font driver should ignore the global advance width defined in the font. By default, that value is used as the advance width for all glyphs when the face has FT_FACE_FLAG_FIXED_WIDTH set.

This flag exists for historical reasons (to support buggy CJK fonts).

FT_LOAD_NO_RECURSE¶

This flag is only used internally. It merely indicates that the font driver should not load composite glyphs recursively. Instead, it should set the ‘num_subglyph’ and ‘subglyphs’ values of the glyph slot accordingly, and set ‘glyph->format’ to FT_GLYPH_FORMAT_COMPOSITE.

The description of sub-glyphs is not available to client applications for now.

This flag implies FT_LOAD_NO_SCALE and FT_LOAD_IGNORE_TRANSFORM.

FT_LOAD_IGNORE_TRANSFORM¶: Indicates that the transform matrix set by FT_Set_Transform should be ignored.

FT_LOAD_MONOCHROME¶

This flag is used with FT_LOAD_RENDER to indicate that you want to render an outline glyph to a 1-bit monochrome bitmap glyph, with 8 pixels packed into each byte of the bitmap data.

Note that this has no effect on the hinting algorithm used. You should rather use FT_LOAD_TARGET_MONO so that the monochrome-optimized hinting algorithm is used.

FT_LOAD_LINEAR_DESIGN¶: Indicates that the ‘linearHoriAdvance’ and ‘linearVertAdvance’ fields of FT_GlyphSlotRec should be kept in font units. See FT_GlyphSlotRec for details.

FT_LOAD_NO_AUTOHINT¶: Disable auto-hinter. See also the note below.