Rockbox Technical Forums
Support and General Use => Theming and Appearance Customization => Topic started by: devoinregress on January 25, 2008, 12:40:00 PM
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I have ideas for a two new fonts, cross stich pattern and more importantly Wim Crowel's New Alphabet.
The problem is, How do I make rockbox .fnt files? Can I do that through FontLab? What program do I use and how do I do that. I think the new alphabet will be perfect for rockbox due to resolution and size limitations.
(http://www.sakkal.com/articles/Arabic_Type_Article/HudaFig5.JPEG)
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All you need is a tool that can export a BDF font. We provide a tool to convert from BDF to Rockbox FNT.
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So it looks like I should make it in FontForge.
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This looks like a promising font. One of the issues faced with making themes is having an ideal font to complement them. It thing that we should do like devoinregress and karashata (creator of acknowledge-12) and begin working on new fonts.
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If I could find a Windows-based BDF font editor I'd clean up some of the fonts I made since there are a few that didn't turn out quite as nice as I'd have liked. That being said, I did make a variety of fonts that are readable in Rockbox, though most are only 10 and 12 pixels high (line height) since my DAP has a rather small screen. I have the fonts in a zip file on my computer and I can dump the zip onto a file hosting site if anyone wants them, and the TTF files I converted them from are freely available if anyone wants to make larger versions of any of those fonts. One note, though: If anyone does make larger fonts, it will take some trial and error to find out what point sizes make what line height.
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karashata: I would like to see/use your fonts...
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crzyboyster: I've uploaded the fonts here:
http://www.megashares.com/upostproc.php?fid=556042
Enjoy!
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I loaded those onto my ipod nano and I was blown away! Those fonts look amazing! I'll see about using them in my themes, but when I do, I'll be sure to give you credit.
How exactly did you make them, though? I have tried making fonts but they never come out good using the font converter tool on the wiki. And can you make some good sans-serif fonts? I'm getting bored of helvR10 ;)
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I used the font conversion tools on the wiki as a matter of fact, but it was a lot of trial and error to find fonts that actually converted well at the sizes I wanted/needed.
Unfortunately, most of the fonts that I tried didn't convert well, either because the letters all ended up squashed together or because parts of the letters vanished due to being too thin and converting to empty space. I found that the best fonts to convert were thicker fonts with large spacing between letters, as they tended to hold up best to the conversion. As you may have noticed with some of those fonts, they're quite wide and wouldn't work as well on smaller screen DAPs.
EDIT: I'm not overly interested in trying to convert any more fonts, because the process takes a long time, and most of the fonts out there wouldn't convert properly with the tools available.
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I wish there was an editor that I could design on a pixel grid instead of vector. Any suggestions? I am running OS X, Linux, and Windows so I can run just about anything.
FontForge just doesn't handle bitmap well and fontlab doesn't do bitmap at all.
I am guessing it isn't possible yet to have different shades to anti-alias type? Maybe someone can work on a font format made up of GIF or PNG files so that we can easily create beautiful anti-aliased fonts easily.
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I suspect that would require a major change to the font renderer to allow it to do alpha compositing, not to mention adding a decoder for the chosen image format to the Rockbox core. Big changes (although a PNG decoder would be nice for album art too).
Although having little familiarity with the Rockbox code I have no idea how hard it would be to add an alpha-channel-capable blitter. Or, actually, how good pre-antialised fonts with an alpha channel would look. iPods have great font rendering on the OF, but I don't know if they're rendering from bitmaps or if they actually have an OpenType (or subset thereof) renderer.
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If it's safe to hazard a guess, I'd guess the iPods are either using a TrueType font renderer (or comparable) or use a custom font set and its own renderer.
On a similar note, I own an iriver Clix2 and it uses TTF and OTF fonts and allows a user to set a font for the UI out of any loaded onto it.
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karashata, you made so excellent fonts! ;D
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Bah! They might be half decent fonts for small screened DAPs, but I'm sure someone could do better, and could make more than just 10 and 12 pixel high fonts for DAPs with larger, higher resolution screens. There are very many fonts out there on the web and the conversion tools available somewhere on the wiki are pretty decent, anyone with lots of time on their hands and willing to spend some of it finding fonts they want to have could probably do much more than I've done.
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Bah! They might be half decent fonts for small screened DAPs, but I'm sure someone could do better, and could make more than just 10 and 12 pixel high fonts for DAPs with larger, higher resolution screens. There are very many fonts out there on the web and the conversion tools available somewhere on the wiki are pretty decent, anyone with lots of time on their hands and willing to spend some of it finding fonts they want to have could probably do much more than I've done.
oh, karashata, you're so modest :P
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I discovered another font that works quite well with the rockbox font converter. It's called "VKB KonQa Communist" and I have converted sizes for use from size 14 to size 8 (although 10 looks the best). It has sort of a "grungy" look.
EDIT: I forgot the link (now included) and have now put in another font in the same font family "VKB KonQa Capitalist" and have put up sizes all the way from size 8 to size 15.
Links: http://crzyboyster.googlepages.com/VKBKonQaFonts.zip
http://www.dafont.com/vkb-konqa.font
EDIT2: Found yet another (maybe 2) fonts that convert well. First off is the "N_FC_Creactivo_2008" font. They did not convert as well as the VKB fonts, but I guess they're OK.
Links: http://crzyboyster.googlepages.com/N_FC_Creactivo_2008Fonts.zip
http://www.dafont.com/nu-creactivo-2008.font
Another font that I started to convert but didn't come out OK (but alright, I guess) was the "Shanghai" font over at:
http://www.dafont.com/shanghai.font
EDIT3: I got started on converting a good sans-serif font and converted over a perfect font (in rockbox and the original version, too). It's called "Mank Sans" and it looks awesome! I converted sizes all the way from 10 to 20 (It wouldn't render under size 10).
Links: http://crzyboyster.googlepages.com/MankSansFamilyFonts.zip
http://www.dafont.com/mank-sans.font
(I only converted "MankSans.ttf" because the others turned out blocky and pixelated, but that one didn't at all (try it out!)
Enjoy!
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Put it in the wiki please...
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Where exactly in the wiki? Has there been a wiki page set up for fonts converted by users?
EDIT: Just made wiki page: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/UserConvertedFonts
Feel free to put up fonts there but remember the guidelines! I am currently asking permission from the authors of the fonts. What does everyone think of the "get permission from author" rule? I personally don't like it, but it would be very un-rockbox to not do that, wouldn't it? ;D
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WOW! Thanks alot crzyboyster and karashata.
Grabbed all the fonts you guys upped and can't wait to try them all out.
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As much as it would be wise to get the permission from the authors/creators of the fonts, most of the fonts online these days can't really be traced to anyone specific... I found the fonts I converted out of an archived pack of 6,760 fonts which I could trace back as far as a font (and other stuff) archive site.
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Maybe we should just put up the fonts and then if the author of the fonts finds his/her font modified and put up for download, we could just take it off?
If the "rule" I put up about asking permission stays in place, there might be a couple (1 to 5) fonts put up for download there and the purpose would be defeated (to organize all fonts converted for rockbox for use in WPS' and on players)...
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I doubt we'd run into issues with a font's author/creator finding the fonts on the wiki and wanting them taken down, after all we did already find them online on various websites, so...
Another question, how do we want to post the fonts to the wiki? do we want to post the .fnt files singularly or can we post them in zip archives?
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When posting the fonts, post a preview pic of it/them
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If there is no explicit permission for us to use them, we cannot.
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karashata: Yes, simply zip up each font separately and include all font sizes you have and upload it to the wiki page itself. (Make sure you get express permission from font author beforehand)
Also put up a preview pic taken on a ipod video simulator on a menu with the best font size and without a wps or background image.
BigBambi: I really don't know what to say... I guess there won't be that many fonts on that page...
EDIT: Just got email from maker of the "VKB KonQa" fonts and he has said that its okay. I will post up those fonts. Future font posters, please follow suit with the naming of files/headings!
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BigBambi: I really don't know what to say... I guess there won't be that many fonts on that page...
That is life. We don't ignore copyright because it is inconvenient.
P.S. A suitable license counts as explicit permission.
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Well, I have been asking permission and setting up the page. Right now I have no clue who to format it.
Go to > http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/UserConvertedFonts
There are two formats set up there, one twiki table style and the other rockbox-themes.org wps style. Which style looks better/ is more suitable?
I do need help setting up the table style so that the left column merges into one column rather than having rows and I also need to figure out how to get rid of borders.
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I'm not sure I could track down the authors of the fonts I converted, and I don't know what licenses they were distributed under other than that they were freely distributable fonts. I'm not very inclined to spend the effort to track down authors or licenses for the fonts I converted, but that's not to say someone else can't do this and post them if they wish. I'm aware of at least two people who've grabbed the zip archive of all the fonts I converted, so if they wish to find the licenses or authors and post them they are more than free to.
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Freely distributable fonts should be OK, right? And can you point me to where you found all of them?
And I still need feedback on which font gallery format to use...
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"Freely Distributable" is not a license. You must be able to show that someone authorized to do so has said "You may redistribute these fonts" (and in the case of converting them for Rockbox, you probably must also have permission to modify them.)
You can say *you* don't care all you want, but Rockbox as a project respects licenses, so please don't upload things without explicitly being able to show you're allowed to.
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I found the fonts in a tarball archive hosted at thelinux.org, and the fonts were archived from the Absolute Fonts Archive site. Enjoy!
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Llorean: What if we ask the authors of all the fonts we submit about redistributing/modifying their fonts and putting them up for download? If they say its OK, we will post them.
And what font gallery format is better?
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Llorean: What if we ask the authors of all the fonts we submit about redistributing/modifying their fonts and putting them up for download? If they say its OK, we will post them.
Sure - the point is you need permission, be it from a license or from direct permission from the author. Without either, we cannot use them.
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BigBambi, Llorean, understood. We will look at the license or get permission to post fonts.
I do need to know which font gallery format to use and I have recently fixed both of them (and yes, the bottom one is a copy of the rockbox-themes.org layout, though that shouldn't be a huge problem, right?)
> http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/UserConvertedFonts
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Have any new Unicode fonts popped up lately?
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karashata can you send me the NewFonts.zip file? Or at least post a link?
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Unfortunately I don't have access to it right now, I'll put it up somewhere and post a link here for anyone who wants it as soon as I can, though. It may be a few days before I can get it up somewhere, and I don't know how long most free file-hosting sites hold onto files, so...
I'll do what I can when I can is all I can say.
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Unfortunately I don't have access to it right now, I'll put it up somewhere and post a link here for anyone who wants it as soon as I can, though. It may be a few days before I can get it up somewhere, and I don't know how long most free file-hosting sites hold onto files, so...
I'll do what I can when I can is all I can say.
Thanks ;D
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The fonts have been uploaded and can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=61667043425b92d81686155677bb2685ba2350a1ca24e1c2
I don't know how long that site will hold onto them, so get them fast.
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The fonts have been uploaded and can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=61667043425b92d81686155677bb2685ba2350a1ca24e1c2
I don't know how long that site will hold onto them, so get them fast.
Thank you, karashata. I'm most gracious
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Have any new Unicode fonts popped up lately?
May I recommened gputeks at the open font library (http://openfontlibrary.org/)... it's near full unicode and does cyrillic quite well too, no asian support though. I converted it in several sizes and was about to upload it when my computer crashed.
BTW, that site has lots of good fonts Rockbox could use on it. The main stipulations of their Open Font License are that the license is distributed with the font, that the author is attributed and that they are not distributed under their original name when converted.