Better Font Support

[supthos]

Hi!
I'm developing an app to produce custom typefaces with the Windows App SDK. You all promised rendering with DWriteCore, but at the moment, v. 1.5, this is impossible with custom fonts, loaded at runtime with a file picker, for example.
The only workaround I have found to possibly work, but not implemented yet is using Win2D Canvas. But that would mean that having to load the font through that library, instead of through DWriteCore.
Also, even if I wanted to render with DWriteCore, there is no clear way to, for example, render a thumbnail to an image without having to go through a device context like a window. Or maybe I'm just not informed on how to do this properly.
Lastly, I need better documentation and examples. The example provided for rendering with DWriteCore is unusable at best and very obfuscated, and does not follow the project structure for building a Windows App SDK app in Visual Studio, but seems to follow the paradigms of Win32 C++ more common with console application logic. Let's not talk about character encoding.
Please, help me out.... I've been stuck trying to render custom fonts for months now. It shouldn't be this complicated!

[castorix]

this is impossible with custom fonts, loaded at runtime with a file picker, for example.

You follow MSDN at :
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/directwrite/custom-font-sets-win10#creating-a-font-set-using-arbitrary-fonts-in-the-local-file-system

[castorix]

I made a quick test without IDWriteFontSetBuilder to simplify, with some random fonts I downloaded from Google, by calling
CreateFontFileReference/CreateFontFace with a Path Geometry to draw a gradient from glyph indices with a SwapChainPanel and it seems to work correctly (Windows App SDK 1.5.24, in C# because I cannot compile C++/WinRT)

Test with "Lovely Home" font :

[castorix]

Also, even if I wanted to render with DWriteCore, there is no clear way to, for example, render a thumbnail to an image without having to go through a device context like a window. Or maybe I'm just not informed on how to do this properly. Lastly, I need better documentation and examples

I just uploaded a test sample in C#, Windows App SDK 1.5.24 : WinUI3_SwapChainPanel_DWriteCore
To be improved : as I added in comments, I met a problem with quality vs DWrite for IDWriteTextLayout
(I let DWriteCreateFactory in comments to switch DWrite/DWriteCore and also a Render2 function for tests with less code for rendering)