Fonts in OpenGL without display lists?

OpenGL OpenGL: Basic Coding
1

Hi, I would like to display fonts, strings more importantly in my application. But I want this without using display lists. Both the wgl functions “wglUseFontBitmaps” and “wglUseFontOutlines” use display lists. Is there a way to display fonts without display lists?
Please help… :confused:

2

No, GL itself doesn’t offer font rendering support.
You need to look at alternatives like

http://gltt.sourceforge.net/
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/henryj/code/#FTGL

With FTGL, I could not get it to compile last time I tried.

without display lists
What do you want instead?
The best is to render as textured polygons.
You can use glDrawPixels or glBitmap.

I’m sure wglUseFontBitmaps uses glBitmap inside the display lists.
wglUseFontOutlines probably uses glVertex calls inside the display lists.

3

Thanks V-man for replying. I should have explained the situation a bit more. What I have is a static library with my drawing code in it. This library is called in an application which has a 3D opengl view (MFC view) in it. My drawing code is called in this view’s draw function. Currently I am using wglUseFontOutLines to display text, but since this view class does not support display lists, the text is not getting displayed. I havent tried wglUseFontBitmaps though.