This seems like it should be rudimentarily easy, but for whatever reason it's not working. I've read similar posts on SO and it seems like there might be an issue with the Font Traits dictionary? Is this an issue or am I just completely missing something? This is my first time messing around with fonts like this so I think it might be the latter.
I don't want to use the constants or supply a font with it's "-bold" variant. I would like to have fine grain control over the font weight.
let traits = [UIFontWeightTrait : 1.0]
imgFontDescriptor = UIFontDescriptor(fontAttributes: [UIFontDescriptorNameAttribute: "Helvetica"])
imgFontDescriptor = imgFontDescriptor.fontDescriptorByAddingAttributes([UIFontDescriptorTraitsAttribute:traits])
imgTextFont = UIFont(descriptor: imgFontDescriptor!, size: 24.0)
Research:
According to the iOS docs using a number value should work (I'm running iOS 9.2):
UIFontWeightTrait
The normalized weight value as an NSNumber object. The valid value range is from -1.0 to 1.0. The value of 0.0 corresponds to the regular or medium font weight. You can also use a font weight constant to specify a particular weight; for a list of constants you can use, see Font Weights. Available in iOS 7.0 and later.
UIFont(descriptor: imgFontDescriptor!, size: 24.0) is returning a Font what match with the descriptor. If it can't find a Font match with your description, it returns a default font. Therefore, you can't control your weight manually. It depends on the Font you use. If the Font is support that weight, it will return that.
One more thing, you should use [UIFontDescriptorFamilyAttribute: "Helvetica"]. So it will determine FontName base on FamilyName & your FontWeight.
The correct way is use the constant from Apple lib:
public let UIFontWeightUltraLight: CGFloat
@available(iOS 8.2, *)
public let UIFontWeightThin: CGFloat
@available(iOS 8.2, *)
public let UIFontWeightLight: CGFloat
@available(iOS 8.2, *)
public let UIFontWeightRegular: CGFloat
@available(iOS 8.2, *)
public let UIFontWeightMedium: CGFloat
@available(iOS 8.2, *)
public let UIFontWeightSemibold: CGFloat
@available(iOS 8.2, *)
public let UIFontWeightBold: CGFloat
@available(iOS 8.2, *)
public let UIFontWeightHeavy: CGFloat
@available(iOS 8.2, *)
public let UIFontWeightBlack: CGFloat*/
You should use http://iosfonts.com/ to determine which font weight that family name is supporting.
In case of Helvetica:
let traits = [UIFontWeightTrait: UIFontWeightLight] // UIFontWeightBold / UIFontWeightRegular
let imgFontDescriptor = UIFontDescriptor(fontAttributes: [UIFontDescriptorFamilyAttribute: "Helvetica"])
imgFontDescriptor = imgFontDescriptor.fontDescriptorByAddingAttributes([UIFontDescriptorTraitsAttribute: traits])