Rotating Lines of Text

You can rotate TrueType fonts at any angle. This is useful for labeling charts and other illustrations. The following example rotates a string in 10-degree increments around the center of the client area by changing the value of the lfEscapement and lfOrientation members of the LOGFONT structure used to create the font.

RECT rc; 
int angle; 
HFONT hfnt, hfntPrev; 
LPSTR lpszRotate = "String to be rotated."; 
 
// Allocate memory for a LOGFONT structure. 
 
PLOGFONT plf = (PLOGFONT) LocalAlloc(LPTR, sizeof(LOGFONT)); 
 
 
// Specify a font typeface name and weight. 
 
lstrcpy(plf->lfFaceName, "Arial"); 
plf->lfWeight = FW_NORMAL; 
 
// Retrieve the client-rectangle dimensions. 
 
GetClientRect(hwnd, &rc); 
 
// Set the background mode to transparent for the 
// text-output operation. 
 
SetBkMode(hdc, TRANSPARENT); 
 
// Draw the string 36 times, rotating 10 degrees 
// counter-clockwise each time. 
 
for (angle = 0; angle < 3600; angle += 100) 
{ 
    plf->lfEscapement = angle; 
    hfnt = CreateFontIndirect(plf); 
    hfntPrev = SelectObject(hdc, hfnt); 
    TextOut(hdc, rc.right / 2, rc.bottom / 2, 
        lpszRotate, lstrlen(lpszRotate)); 
    SelectObject(hdc, hfntPrev); 
    DeleteObject(hfnt); 
} 
 
// Reset the background mode to its default. 
 
SetBkMode(hdc, OPAQUE); 
 
// Free the memory allocated for the LOGFONT structure. 
 
LocalFree((LOCALHANDLE) plf);