Lesson 24 : Drawing Text

24.1 Drawing Text with the DrawString Method

In this Lesson, we will learn how to draw text on the screen using the DrawString method.

In order to draw text on the screen, we can use the DrawString method. The syntax is as follows:

myGraphics.DrawString(myText, myFont, mybrush, X , Y)

*myGraphics is the Graphics object, myText is the text you wish to display on the screen, myFont is the font object created by you, myBrush is the brush style created by you and X, Y are the coordinates of the upper left corner of the Text.

You can create the Font object in Visual Basic 2010 using the following statement:

myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20)

Where the first argument of the font is the font typeface, and the second argument is the font size. You can add a third argument as font style, either bold, italic, underline. Here are the examples:

myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Bold)
myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Underline)
myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Italic)
myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Regular)

To create your Brush object, you can use the following statement:

Dim myBrush As Brush
myBrush = New Drawing.SolidBrush(Color.BrushColor)

Besides the seven colors, some of the common Brush Colors are AliceBlue, AquaMarine Beige, DarkMagenta, DrarkOliveGreen, SkyBlue and more. You don’t have to remember the names of all the colors, the IntelliSense will let you browse through the colors in a drop-down menu once you type the dot after the word Color.

Now we shall proceed to draw the font using the sample code below:

Example 24.1

Dim myGraphics As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
Dim myFont As Font
Dim myBrush As Brush
 myBrush = New Drawing.SolidBrush(Color.DarkOrchid)
 myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Underline)
 myGraphics.DrawString("Visual Basic 2010", myFont, myBrush, 10, 10)

Run the program above and you can see the following output:

Figure 24.1

The preceding can be modified if you don’t want to create the Font and the Brush objects. You can use the font of an existing object such as the Form and the System Colors. Replace the last line in the preceding example with this line(you need to delete the lines that create the Brush and the Font objects as well)

myGraphics.DrawString(“Visual Basic 2010”, me.Font, System.Drawing.Brushes.DarkOrchid, 10, 10)

You can also add an InputBox which let the user enter his or her message then display the message on the screen.

This is shown in Example 24.2

Example 24.2

Dim myGraphics As Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics
Dim myFont As Font
Dim myBrush As Brush
Dim userMsg As String
 userMsg = InputBox("What is your message?", "Message Entry Form", "Enter your message here", 100, 200)
 myBrush = New Drawing.SolidBrush(Color.DarkOrchid)
 myFont = New System.Drawing.Font("Verdana", 20, FontStyle.Underline)
 myGraphics.DrawString(userMsg, myFont, myBrush, 10, 10)