After the system draws the string, it updates the current character position to the pixel to the right of the last character in the string. The text string is drawn in the current font and color. If the origin of a character string lies outside the viewport , none of the characters in the string are drawn. If the origin is inside the viewport, the characters are individually clipped to the screenmask . The screenmask is normally set to the same size as the viewport, although it can be set smaller than the viewport to enable two kinds of clipping, as illustrated in the Gross and Fine Clipping figure .
Gross clipping removes all strings that start outside the viewport.
Fine clipping trims individual characters to the screenmask. Viewport clipping and screenmask clipping apply to all drawing primitives as well. However, the difference between these two types of clipping is usually not important, except for character strings. Characters are drawn in the current color. Unless the font is specifically changed in the program, character strings are drawn in the current font.