Workaround for the Mono PrivateFontCollection.AddFontFile bug

Question

When I call the PrivateFontCollection.AddFontFile method in Mono.net It always returns a standard font-family. This bug has already been reported on several websites, but as far as I know without a way to solve it. The bug itself isn't fixed in the Mono-libraries yet. Is there any workaround for it?

EDIT: As a reaction on henchman's answer I will post the code:

PrivateFontCollection pfc = new PrivateFontCollection();
pfc.AddFontFile("myFontFamily.ttf");
myFontFamily = pfc.Families[0x00];
Font myFont = new Font(myFontFamily,14.0f);

I know this code will work fine on the Microsoft.Net framework, but when executing on Mono, it just gives a standard font-family (I think it is Arial) with the name of myFontFamily.ttf

Ferren

Have you filed a bug in Mono's bugzilla? That's the only way for the team to know that there's a bug to fix in a first place. – Violoncellist

The bug was already reported by someone else in November on bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=77498 – Ferren

This bug is marked as RESOLVED, and it was about a crash. Now the crash is fixed, but the behavior is still wrong. Please file a new bug with the appropriate expected behavior. Thanks! – Violoncellist

Answer 1

Found this post from google. If it's any consolation, I'm experiencing the same issue with AddMemoryFont (works fine on Windows, mono gives me a generic font.) If it's any consolation, it looks like it's a problem with Mono, and not your code.

Digging through the source, System.Windows.Drawing.PrivateFontCollection is mostly just a wrapper around GDIPlus.GdipPrivateAddFontFile, which itself is a wrapper around fontconfig's FcConfigAppFontAddFile. The reason it doesn't appear to throw any errors is that GDIplus doesn't check for a return value from fontconfig, so it seems like fontconfig isn't able to read the font for whatever reason, but GDIplus doesn't know about it, so neither does PrivateFontCollection.

Taub