How to get Win32 to use Windows XP style fonts - winapi

Question

I'm writing a Win32 application using plain C and WinAPI. No MFC or C++ is allowed. To get the controls to draw using the appropriate style, I use a manifest, as described in the corresponding MSDN article. Everything is fine, and when I change the system style, my application changes style as well. But the font used is just ugly. How do I force the application to use the standard system font?

Answer 1

You can use SystemParametersInfo with SPI_GETNONCLIENTMETRICS parameter to retrieve the current font. SystemParametersInfo will take into account the current theme and provides font information for captions, menus, and message dialogs. (See remark to GetStockObject http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd144925(VS.85).aspx). The function will retrieve NONCLIENTMETRICS structure (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff729175(v=VS.85).aspx) which contains all information you needs:
typedef struct tagNONCLIENTMETRICS {
UINT cbSize;
int iBorderWidth;
int iScrollWidth;
int iScrollHeight;
int iCaptionWidth;
int iCaptionHeight;
LOGFONT lfCaptionFont;
int iSmCaptionWidth;
int iSmCaptionHeight;
LOGFONT lfSmCaptionFont;
int iMenuWidth;
int iMenuHeight;
LOGFONT lfMenuFont;
LOGFONT lfStatusFont;
LOGFONT lfMessageFont;
#if (WINVER >= 0x0600)
int iPaddedBorderWidth;
#endif
} NONCLIENTMETRICS, *PNONCLIENTMETRICS, *LPNONCLIENTMETRICS;
An example how to create and a set font in a window/control if you knows LOGFONT parameter see at the end of the example from change the default window font in a win32 windows project, but use do LOGFONT not from GetStockObject(DEFAULT_GUI_FONT), but returned by SystemParametersInfo with SPI_GETNONCLIENTMETRICS parameter instead.