Why won't Delphi XE2 let me embed a font resource as RCDATA?

Question

I would like to embed a .ttf font resource into my EXE and dynamically load it. This particular method expects the resource to be of type RCDATA. So, I go to Project > Resources and Images... press Add..., and pick my .ttf file. The resource type FONT is automatically selected with an identifier of just 1. I change the type to to RCDATA and type in my own resource name.

Problem: When I press Ok I get an error that the identifier of a FONT resource must be a numeric value. But it wasn't FONT type anymore, I had changed it to RCDATA.

How do I get past this problem?

Answer 1

(asking and answering together because I'm sure others have seen this problem)

It seems to be just a small bug in the IDE. When you first select your .ttf file in this resource screen, change the type, press Ok without changing the identifier (leave it 1). Then, open the same screen back up, change the identifier to your own, and press Ok. It only works if you close and re-open the Resources and Images screen.

You could of course also write your own .rc file and do everything manually without this screen.

Answer 2

Unlike Jerry says, you can simply "load" the font file in the Resources and Images... dialog. Once you selected it, you can change the type to RCDATA (combobox an the lower right) and if you have done that, you can change the name to whatever valid name you choose.

There is no need to close and re-open the dialog.

I tried this in XE2 and in XE7, and it works as expected. The FONT type is merely the default for, well, font files. That can easily be changed in the dialog.

This doesn't look like a bug to me. Just plain default behaviour when you load a font file. Just like there is default behaviour when you load a .pas file in the editor.

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If you want to use an .rc file, it is quite easy to generate one in the editor (new text file with extension .rc) and then you can add it to your project. The IDE will take care of the rest. No need to do anything manually there either, except of course editing the .rc file.