NAME

       load_font - Loads a font from a file. Allegro game programming library.

SYNOPSIS

       #include <allegro.h>

       FONT *load_font(const char *filename, RGB *pal, void *param);

DESCRIPTION

       Loads  a  font from a file. At present, this supports loading fonts from a GRX format .fnt
       file, a 8x8 or 8x16 BIOS format .fnt file, a datafile or any bitmap  format  that  can  be
       loaded by load_bitmap().

       If  the  font  contains  palette  information,  then the palette is returned in the second
       parameter, which should be an array of 256 RGB structures (a PALETTE).  The  pal  argument
       may be NULL. In this case, the palette data, if present, is simply not returned.

       The  third  parameter can be used to pass specific information to a custom loader routine.
       Normally, you can just leave this as NULL. Note that  another  way  of  loading  fonts  is
       embedding them into a datafile and using the datafile related functions.

       Example:

          FONT *myfont;
          PALETTE palette;
          ...
          myfont = load_font("my_font.pcx", palette, NULL);
          if (!myfont)
             abort_on_error("Couldn't load font!");
          ...
          textout_centre_ex(screen, myfont, "This is my own pretty font!",
                            SCREEN_W / 2, SCREEN_H / 2, white, black);
          ...
          destroy_font(myfont);

RETURN VALUE

       Returns  a  pointer  to  the  font or NULL on error. Remember that you are responsible for
       destroying the font when you are finished with it to avoid memory leaks.

SEE ALSO

       register_font_file_type(3alleg4),      load_bitmap(3alleg4),       load_dat_font(3alleg4),
       load_bios_font(3alleg4),      load_grx_font(3alleg4),      load_grx_or_bios_font(3alleg4),
       load_bitmap_font(3alleg4), load_txt_font(3alleg4), destroy_font(3alleg4), exfont(3alleg4)