Hi everyone,

I've been trying to use a different font in the canvas label apart from the default ones (helvetica, dejavu and times new roman I think) and also change the default bold style to normal but even I've tried a lot of things, nothing worked for me.

I've tried to add the fonts to the font folder where the dejavu font is. I've tried to change the new font name to the default dejavu which the program recognizes by default, but didn't work neither. I've read the github readme and also tried the commands that are in there, but the problem is that the program doesn't recognize the fonts.

Does anyone know how to add new fonts to the canvas label if it's possible?

(I'm using Puredata 0.49-1 64 bit in windows 10)

You can change the default font by adding for eg. -font-face Arial to startup in preferences
or starting pd from a batch file or command prompt with pd.exe -font-face Arial.
I am fairly sure that the font name cannot contain spaces, and as I have just tested DO NOT put the font name in quotes or you will need to edit the registry to fix a tcl error that prevents editing the startup prefs.

This will only affect the Pure Data you are running and would look different if the patch was opened elsewhere.

@Balwyn said:

-font-face Arial

Thanks man, I was typing the wrong flag and as you said, it gave me an error that now prevents me from entering to the startup flags, so I installed another version of puredata to be able to test this flag... Now it's time to restore the window register....

Also, is there any way to use different font weights in the same patch? Or is it locked to one style?

@JackPD said:

Also, is there any way to use different font weights in the same patch? Or is it locked to one style?

Technically I would say no. because -font-weight changes all the fonts available
However I just downloaded FontForge, copied ariblk.ttf (Arial Black) from the Arial Font Family in (C;\Windows\Fonts)
opened it in FontForge renamed Black and saved it as Black.otf, write clicked and installed for all users.
opened Pd with: pd -font-face Black -font-weight normal.
Of course there are rights issues and legibility to contend with, but you could start with bold and install a normal
The Helvetica and Times are hard coded and cannot be changed

@Balwyn said:

, copied ariblk.ttf (Arial Black) from the Arial Font Family in (C;\Windows\Fonts)
opened it in FontForge renamed Black and saved it as Black.otf, write clicked and installed for all users.

That's so nice! So you can install multiple font faces in puredata? I mean, pd -font-face Arial and then pd -font-face Black so I can have all the fonts that I want in the same patch?

I like what you did but I really don't know if it's possible to have for example, arial and arial black at the same time installing them like two different fonts.

Thanks for your answer

No, its not possible.
As an exercise I was cheating with the fact that Helvetica doesn't exist by default on windows and therefore would be drawn with the default san serif font Arial.
-font-weight changes the weight of all the fonts available so the three Pure Data fonts would all be of that weight. Arial is font family and will always choose the startup -font-weight. Therefore I extracted the black weight and created a new font Black.otf with only one weight normal. (but looks bold).
opened Pd with: pd -font-face Black -font-weight normal.
This gave me Font 1 Black (Arial Black) Font 2 Helvetica (Arial normal) Font 3 Times (Times New Roman normal)
Of course the drawbacks are many
It would be hard to make it work correctly on other computers
changing the font and weight also changes the code font and weight (readability)
only font 1 can be changed
its probably not acceptable to copy fonts

It just occurred to me that you could fake a bold font option, because font backgrounds are transparent