OpenGL Text Output Question submitted by (21 July 2000) | Return to The Archives

| I started working on a game in OpenGL in MSVC and I want to output text to the screen for debug purposes etc.. But how to draw text on the screen? I have a voodoo2 card, and that's why I can't use DrawText() or TextOut() Windows functions, because those will draw to my ati video card Is there some way to do it whithout writing your text functions? |

| OpenGL doesn't directly offer support for drawing characters. Rather, it provides low-level support leaving the rest up to you. If you have a copy of The Red Book ("OpenGL Programming Guide" by Woo, Neider & Davis), you can look in Chapter 8 (on page 287 of the second edition) and find source to font.c which does what you want.
Alternatively, you can read that chapter ("Chapter 8: Drawing Pixels, Bitmaps, Fonts, and Images") from the Red Book online right here. While I'm at it, here are some more useful links (these are books online):

> - OpenGL Programming Guide (a.k.a. The Red Book)
> - OpenGL Reference Manual (a.k.a. The Blue Book)
> - The OpenGL Super Bible

Response provided by Paul Nettle

This article was originally an entry in flipCode's Ask Midnight, a Question and Answer column with Paul Nettle that's no longer active.

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