Add Reference to Default Font object

[blackboxlogic]

Increasing access

Proposal would simplify working with fonts.

Most appropriate sub-area of p5.js?

• Accessibility
• Color
• Core/Environment/Rendering
• Data
• DOM
• Events
• Image
• IO
• Math
• Typography
• Utilities
• WebGL
• Build process
• Unit testing
• Internationalization
• Friendly errors
• Other (specify if possible)

Feature request details

To use textBounds() or textToPoints(), you first need to call loadFont() to get a reference to a p5.Font object. Creating a reference like defaultFont or currentFont would bypass the need to find a font file, include it in your project, and load it if the user is happy with the default p5js font.

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[jeanetteandrews]

Hi! A quick alternative is to load a URL to a remote font, like this:
font = loadFont('https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/roboto/v20/KFOmCnqEu92Fr1Mu4mxP.ttf');
This way you won't need to download the font file and include it in your project.

However I found that some URLs return Error: Unsupported OpenType signature wOF2: https://editor.p5js.org/jeanetteandrews/sketches/9qDCQXgG4
I'm not sure if this is a bug or is due to browser security.

[dhowe]

@jeanetteandrews this is likely a valid error from the opentype library - not all fonts can be parsed by opentype

[dhowe]

To use textBounds() or textToPoints(), you first need to call loadFont() to get a reference to a p5.Font object. Creating a reference like defaultFont or currentFont would bypass the need to find a font file, include it in your project, and load it if the user is happy with the default p5js font.

This is a good suggestion - there are issues to be considered with a) the size that it adds to the package, and b) the licensing for this 'default' font

[blackboxlogic]

I thought this could be possible without the p5js developers adding a whole font file. Since a 'text("hi", 0, 0)' works without referencing a font, it seems a default font gets acquired either from the browser or the operating system, and that same font could be exposed by reference.

[dhowe]

This default font is a font supplied by the browser... we can use it, but we don't get all the font data that would be needed to create a p5.Font object (for example, the paths for each glyph).

This was a compromise that allowed for simple uses (drawing text) but didn't t add to the size of the package. However its something we could potentially revisit in the new version, assuming there was a small enough font with appropriate licensing (of course the font's size is often proportional to the number of characters it supports, which may well raise other access-related issues)