freetypy.Face.load_glyph

Face.load_glyph()

Load a single glyph.

Parameters:
  • glyph_index (int) – The index of the glyph in the font file. For CID-keyed fonts (either in PS or in CFF format) this argument specifies the CID value.
  • load_flags (int, optional) – A flag indicating what to load for this glyph. The LOAD constants can be used to control the glyph loading process (e.g., whether the outline should be scaled, whether to load bitmaps or not, whether to hint the outline, etc).
Returns:

glyph – The loaded Glyph.
Return type:

Glyph

Notes

By default, hinting is enabled and the font’s native hinter (see FACE_FLAG.HINTER) is preferred over the auto-hinter. You can disable hinting by setting LOAD.NO_HINTING or change the precedence by setting LOAD.FORCE_AUTOHINT. You can also set LOAD.NO_AUTOHINT in case you don’t want the auto-hinter to be used at all.

See the description of FACE_FLAG.TRICKY for a special exception (affecting only a handful of Asian fonts).

Besides deciding which hinter to use, you can also decide which hinting algorithm to use. See LOAD‘s TARGET_XXX constants for details.

Note that the auto-hinter needs a valid Unicode cmap (either a native one or synthesized by FreeType) for producing correct results. If a font provides an incorrect mapping (for example, assigning the char code U+005A, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z, to a glyph depicting a mathematical integral sign), the auto-hinter might produce useless results.

The loaded glyph may be transformed. See set_transform for the details.

For subsetted CID-keyed fonts, a ValueError exception is thrown for invalid CID values (this is, for CID values which don’t have a corresponding glyph in the font). See the discussion of the FACE_FLAG.CID_KEYED flag for more details.

You should use only one of the LOAD TARGET_XXX values in your load_flags. They can’t be OR’ed.

If LOAD.RENDER is also set, the glyph is rendered in the corresponding mode (i.e., the mode which matches the used algorithm best). An exception is LOAD.TARGET_MONO since it implies LOAD.MONOCHROME.