DirectWrite is a text layout and glyph rendering

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. It was designed to replace

GDI GDI may refer to: Science and technology * Gasoline direct injection, a type of fuel injection * Graphics Device Interface, a component of Microsoft Windows * Guanosine nucleotide dissociation inhibitor, a protein Organisations * Gabriel Dumont I ...

/GDI+ and

Uniscribe Uniscribe is the Microsoft Windows set of services for rendering Unicode-encoded text, supporting complex text layout. It is implemented in the dynamic link library . Uniscribe was released with Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer 5.0. In addition ...

for screen-oriented rendering and was first shipped with

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

and

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2, codenamed "Windows Server 7" or "Windows Server 2008 Release 2", is the eighth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It was release ...

, as well as

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

and

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008, codenamed "Longhorn Server" (alternatives: "Windows Vista Server" or "Windows Server Vista"), is the seventh major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server b ...

(with Platform Update installed). DirectWrite is hardware-accelerated (using the

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

) when running on top of

Direct2D Direct2D is a 2D vector graphics application programming interface (API) designed by Microsoft and implemented in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and also Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (with Platform Update ...

, but can also use the CPU to render on any target, including a

bitmap In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...

Features

* Comprehensive support for

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

, with over 20 scripts providing layout and rendering of every language supported in Windows. DirectWrite supports measuring, drawing, and

hit-testing In computer graphics programming, hit-testing (hit detection, picking, or pick correlation) is the process of determining whether a user-controlled cursor (such as a mouse cursor or touch-point on a touch-screen interface) intersects a given graphic ...

of multi-format text. Supported Unicode features include BIDI, line breaking, surrogates, UVS, language-guided script itemization, number substitution, and glyph shaping. * Sub-pixel

ClearType ClearType is Microsoft's implementation of subpixel rendering technology in rendering text in a font system. ClearType attempts to improve the appearance of text on certain types of computer display screens by sacrificing color fidelity for addit ...

text rendering with bi-directional antialiasing which can interoperate with GDI/GDI+,

Direct3D Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware ...

and any application-specific technology. When using with Direct2D, text rendering can be hardware-accelerated or can use WARP software rasterizer when hardware acceleration is not available. * Supports advanced typographic features of

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. Derived from TrueType, it retains TrueType's basic structure but adds many intricate data structures for describing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corpora ...

, such as stylistic alternates and swashes, which were never supported in GDI and WinForms. These features were demoed at DirectWrite's launch (at PDC2008) using the Gabriola font, itself also introduced with Windows 7. * Provides a low-level glyph rendering API for those who employ proprietary text layout and Unicode-to-glyph processing. In Windows 8.1, DirectWrite gained support for color fonts.

DWriteCore

DWriteCore is the

Windows App SDK Windows App SDK (formerly known as Project Reunion) is a software development kit (SDK) from Microsoft that provides a unified set of APIs and components that can be used to develop desktop applications for both Windows 11 and Windows 10 version ...

(Project Reunion) implementation of DirectWrite that runs on versions of Windows down to Windows 10, version 1809 (10.0; Build 17763), and opens the door for cross-platform usage.

Uses

The XPS viewer in Windows 7 uses DirectWrite, but it renders the output on a GDI+ surface.

Internet Explorer 9 Internet Explorer 9 or IE9 (officially Windows Internet Explorer 9) is the ninth major version of the Internet Explorer web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on March 14, 2011, as the successor to Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft re ...

and later versions use DirectWrite layered over Direct2D for improved visual quality and performance. Firefox 4 also added DirectWrite support, but rendering in the DirectWrite specific style was made non-default for some fonts in Firefox 7 due to user complaints about the rendering quality.

Microsoft Office 2013 Microsoft Office 2013 (codenamed Office 15) is a version of Microsoft Office, a productivity suite for Microsoft Windows. Unlike with Office 2010, no macOS equivalent was released. Microsoft Office 2013 includes extended file format support, use ...

supports either Direct2D/DirectWrite or GDI/Uniscribe for display rendering and typography.

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

in Windows supports DirectWrite starting from version 37.

Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is a Proprietary Software, proprietary cross-platform software, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft and based on the Chromium (web browser), Chromium open-source project, superseding Edge Legacy. In Windows 11, Edge ...

with

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...

engine also supports DirectWrite and use it by default.https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2021/06/02/improving-font-rendering-in-microsoft-edge/

Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

's desktop client uses DirectWrite to render color emojis on Windows.

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

has the option to enable DirectWrite for improved font smoothing and kerning on its desktop client

References

{{Microsoft APIs Text rendering libraries DirectX

Features

DWriteCore

Uses

See also

References