The GDI is the GWES subsystem that controls the display of text and graphics. Use GDI to draw lines, curves, closed figures, text, and bitmap images.
GDI uses a device context to store data that it requires to display text and graphics on a specified device. The graphics objects stored in a device context include a pen for line drawing, a brush for painting and filling, a font for text output, a bitmap for copying or scrolling, a palette for defining the available colors, and a clipping region. Windows CE supports printer device contexts for drawing on printers, display device contexts for drawing on video displays, and memory device contexts for drawing into memory.
The following table shows GDI features supported by Windows CE.
GDI feature |
Description |
| Raster and TrueType fonts | TrueType fonts are scalable and rotatable. Seven rasterized system fonts are available in several sizes in ROM. You can also add your own raster fonts. Windows CE supports only one category of font, either raster or TrueType, on a specified system. |
| Custom color palettes and both palletized and nonpalletized color display devices | Supports color bit depths of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32 bits per pixel (bpp). A bpp depth of 2 is unique to Windows CE. |
| Bit block transfer functions and raster operation codes | Enables you to transform and combine bitmaps |
| Pens and brushes | Supports dashed, wide, and solid pens, patterned brushes |
| Printing | Supports graphics printing |
| Cursors | Supports full use of cursors, including user-defined cursors, or the wait cursor |
| Shape drawing functions | Supports the ellipse, polygon, rectangle, and round rectangle shapes |
Windows CE GDI does not support the following features: