12684: small/condensed font

oliof

The 12864 menu system currently has two fonts, "small" and "default".

I am currently working on adapting the Ultimate Display System to IDEX, and even with the small font I have trouble of getting the relevant information onto a single screen.

Thus, I would request an option to have a smaller or condensed font.

I assume this is a low priority request (-:

dc42

@oliof the main work involved would be to generate the fonts. If you want to help with this feature request, you could do that. The fonts are generated using GLCD Font Creator, and it has to run in compatibility mode under Windows for it to work properly. I normally import the Liberation Sans font as it is royalty-free. After importing it and choosing the output size in pixels, a lot of the characters need to be cleaned up by hand to look reasonable. At least the code points from 0x20 to 0xFF need to be converted and (where necessary) tidied up.

Then the font needs to be exported in C format, and the code adjusted to match the format of the existing font files in src/Display/Lcd/fonts.

The existing small font is 7 x 11 pixels so you would have to go smaller than that, perhaps 5 x 8.

oliof

@dc42 I will try to get a font prepared. I dont have ready access to a Windows machine and spent the better of an afternoon and evniing trying to find a Linux toolchain to convert one of the 5x8 / 5x9 fonts floating around with a compatible license, but so far without success (conversion either butchered up the font or required preparing a font map in photoshop...). I will bump this thread when I have something sorted (-;

I will look at Marlin source code as well, they use a 6x9 font as small font.

droftarts

@oliof there’s a few 5x7 and 5x8 bitmap fonts around, mainly old DOS fonts, that seem to be free/open source. I found a few with a quick google.

Ian

oliof

@droftarts yes, I do have fonts, thanks (-; just not in the desired format yet.

(The Marlin font would have the advantage that I could look into one other of my long list of ideas; namely recreating Marlins menus in RRF).

dc42

@oliof last time I looked, Marlin used fixed width fonts, although that might have changed by now. RRF uses proportionally spaced fonts.