You can use the Font Editor to alter and customize image-font files. Files created with the Font Editor have a .FNT extension. After you create a custom font, put it into a dynamic-link library (DLL) that the application can load. Once the application loads this library, it can use any of the custom fonts the library contains.

DLLs that contain fonts are unique; they contain data segments and empty (or useless) code segments. They are unique because they contain no executable code, unlike normal DLLs. Also you are able to install the font file as a public font if desired; GpiLoadFonts will make it available only as a private font. The operating system naming convention for a DLL that contains font information end with a .FON extension.

To create a DLL, you must use an assembler, a linker, and the operating system Resource Compiler. For this example, assume that your custom font file is named NEWFONT.FNT.

After creating your custom font file, you need to create a special assembler language file with your editor. Call this file MYFONT.ASM, for example. The following figure shows an example of the source code for this file.

   code segment word      ;Makes dummy code segment aligned on word boundary
   db "empty_segment"     ;Initializes a string in dummy segment
   code ends              ;Dummy segment ends here
   end                    ;Terminates source file

After you have created MYFONT.ASM, assemble it by using the following command:

    masm myfont

After assembling the MYFONT.ASM file, create a module-definition file. Call this file MYFONT.DEF, for example. It should contain the statements in the following figure.

    LIBRARY myfont
    SEGMENTS CODE MOVEABLE

The first statement tells the linker that you are creating a library with the module name, MYFONT. The second statement tells the linker that the segments in this library are movable code segments.

After creating MYFONT.DEF, start the linker with the command in the following figure.

    link myfont,,,,myfont.def

This command creates an empty executable file called MYFONT.EXE.

After creating the empty executable file, which is the template for a DLL, create a resource file and call it MYFONT.RC. For example, if your font file is called NEWFONT.FNT, you would place the statement in the following figure in MYFONT.RC.

    FONT    200     NEWFONT.FNT

This statement assigns the identifier, 200, to the font resource NEWFONT.FNT.

Finally, use the Resource Compiler to add the font file (NEWFONT.FNT) to the empty DLL as in the following figure.

    rc  myfont.rc

The executable file, MYFONT.EXE, now contains your custom fonts. After you have renamed this file, MYFONT.FON, you can load the fonts into your application using GpiLoadFonts and pass it a pointer to the path and library name as the second argument-for example, c:\os2\dll\myfont.fon.