Are you drawing text at an angle with TextRenderer?

Question

This is a question for folks that are aware of the difference in quality of output between TextRenderer.DrawText and (Graphics.DrawString + Graphics.TextRenderingHint = Text.TextRenderingHint.AntiAlias). It is an issue that has been discussed by others,
elsewhere, without resolution, and I'm simply asking if anyone has come up with a workaround.
I want to render text in the quality of TextRenderer.DrawText, at right angles or upside down. TextFormatFlags.PreserveGraphicsTranslateTransform ignores calls to RotateTransform on the Graphics object that exposes IDeviceContext to DrawText, and DrawText doesn't
play nicely with bitmaps.
Has anyone figured out a way to draw text at the same quality provided by TextRenderer.DrawText, at an angle other than 0 degrees?
(For those who need a back story to prove to you that I cannot use a Label or Graphics.DrawString for this, here you go.
There is a cat stuck in a tree in my back yard. I would like to rescue him, but there is a troll standing between me and the tree. He's a nasty troll, but on TV he plays a happy-go-lucky helpful troll, so when I call the police to complain, they just laugh
at me. "Ha! You can't fool us! We watch TV!"
The troll will allow me to reach the cat if I provide him with a UserControl that renders text at the same quality as the Windows.Forms.Label control, but at angles 90, 180 and -90 degrees. He is a clever troll in that he notices details between shoddy and
neat; rough and smooth; ugly and pretty; cat and honey badger. Therefore, I have not been able to fool him into thinking that ugly text is pretty by asserting that ugly text is pretty. Argh. I dislike this troll.)

Answer 1

And this has to do with
Usability Steven's
 issue in what fasion and why are you responding to somebody elses issue
Mick Doherty? Or is this just for my information?
La vida loca
Hi Monkey
This was mainly for info, but the OP did question the difference between GDI and GDIPlus methods of drawing rotated text. Your example only provides a GDIPlus method.
GDI does not respect the Graphics objects rotations, but so long as the PreserveGraphicsTranslateTransform flag is set it will respect Translations.
Here's a simple example to highlight the issue:
Public Class Form1
Public Sub New()
' This call is required by the designer.
InitializeComponent()
' Add any initialization after the InitializeComponent() call.
Me.SetStyle(ControlStyles.ResizeRedraw, True)
End Sub
Private Sub Form1_Paint(sender As System.Object, e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs) Handles MyBase.Paint
Dim testString As String = "My Test String"
Dim angle As Single = 0
If Me.CheckBox1.Checked Then angle = 180
Using testFont As New Font("Arial", 24, FontStyle.Regular, GraphicsUnit.Point)
Dim rc As Rectangle = Me.ClientRectangle
rc.Offset(0, -24)
Me.DrawRotatedGDIText(e.Graphics, testString, testFont, rc, Color.Red, angle)
rc.Offset(0, 48)
Me.DrawRotatedGDIPlusText(e.Graphics, testString, testFont, rc, Color.Black, angle)
End Using
End Sub
Private Sub CheckBox1_CheckedChanged(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles CheckBox1.CheckedChanged
Me.Invalidate()
End Sub
Private Sub DrawRotatedGDIText(graphics As Graphics, text As String, font As Font, bounds As Rectangle, color As Color, rotation As Single)
Dim sz As Size = TextRenderer.MeasureText(text, font)
Dim centre As Point = bounds.Location
centre.Offset(bounds.Width \ 2, bounds.Height \ 2)
Dim offset As Point = New Point(-sz.Width \ 2, -sz.Height \ 2)
graphics.TranslateTransform(centre.X, centre.Y)
graphics.RotateTransform(rotation)
TextRenderer.DrawText(graphics, text, font, offset, color, TextFormatFlags.PreserveGraphicsTranslateTransform)
graphics.ResetTransform()
End Sub
Private Sub DrawRotatedGDIPlusText(graphics As Graphics, text As String, font As Font, bounds As Rectangle, color As Color, rotation As Single)
Dim sz As Size = graphics.MeasureString(text, font).ToSize
Dim centre As Point = bounds.Location
centre.Offset(bounds.Width \ 2, bounds.Height \ 2)
Dim offset As Point = New Point(-sz.Width \ 2, -sz.Height \ 2)
graphics.TranslateTransform(centre.X, centre.Y)
graphics.RotateTransform(rotation)
Using myBrush As New SolidBrush(color)
graphics.DrawString(text, font, myBrush, offset)
End Using
graphics.ResetTransform()
End Sub
End Class
Here you can see the GDI string (red text) is rendered differently to the GDI Plus string (black text) i.e. the GDI Plus text is longer. Both strings have been rendered to the correct location as set by the graphics transformation:
Here a Rotation to the graphics object has been performed, but the GDi method has totally ignored it:
As a rule, Win32 based controls render with GDI rather than GDI+ and so if we wish to draw a custom control which appears similar to a Win32 based control we need to render with GDI. If you've ever tried to ownerdraw a tabcontrol then you will have noticed
that the text does not always fit on the tabs if we've used GDI+. using GDI the text fits perfectly, but when we side align the tabs the text does not rotate. We can, as the OP has done, draw unrotated text to a bitmap and then rotate the bitmap and this
works well if we have a solid background. If we have a textured background however, this method is not acceptable.
Mick Doherty
http://dotnetrix.co.uk
http://glassui.codeplex.com