AA fonts

[Greg T.]

I've spent some time recently trying to develop a Rockbox theme for the Sansa Clip Zip (96 x 96 screen) and have been frustrated by the lack of good, free, anti-aliased fonts. So I went to the bother of setting up a Rockbox development environment, downloaded some open source fonts from Google Fonts, and converted from *.ttf format to Rockbox's *.fnt format using Rockbox's convttf tool. In most cases, these are available in one-pixel increments between 12 to 20 pixels. For the time being, they can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/?xe69ja577wbbvx6

I experimented some with an unofficial -L option (lighter hinting algorithm), by patching and recompiling the source code. (http://gerrit.rockbox.org/r/#/c/412/). I did not document my use of this option particularly well, but it was helpful for some fonts at small sizes, particularly the Ubuntu font. (Ubuntu is widely available in Rockbox themes, but I had better luck rolling my own version.)

The included AA fonts and the convttf settings I used (aside from the -L setting) are as follows:

Ubuntu -c 1 -Ta 1 [the -c option wasn't needed when using the -L option]
Dosis -Ta 2 [note: the digits in this font are not monospaced]
Roboto -Ta 1
Roboto Condensed -Ta 1
Noto Sans -Ta 3
Droid Sans [no special settings]
DejaVu Sans [no special settings]
Source Sans Pro -Ta 2 -Td 1

Hope this helps someone out there.

[saratoga]

Neat.  These should probably be added to the font pack.

[lebellium]

Whaouh! Thanks dude! I may use some of them in my "lebellium Samsung-like" themes 

[soap]

Very nice bit of work.  Thanks.

[toehser]

Neat.  These should probably be added to the font pack.

I concur!  Right now there is a "font pack" and a link for some "Ubuntu" converted fonts -

This should get a link and have the zip file placed on a rockbox host, also...

The Mediafire location is not the right place to preserve this... http://www.mediafire.com/download/xe69ja577wbbvx6/fonts.zip

... On further reflection, maybe some of these should be default fonts, not just in the font pack ... I'm just saying ...

[gevaerts]

... On further reflection, maybe some of these should be default fonts, not just in the font pack ... I'm just saying ...

You seem to like controversy

[toehser]

Well, I certainly don't shy away from it for a good cause...

And... well... I didn't assume that it would be controversial that cabbiev2 with 8-pt rockfont might not be the BEST foot forward first impression...

[toehser]

I mean... here is the first impression of the current default theme for the Sansa Clip Zip... and an AA font theme called Cleanscreen... which do we want to be people's first impression of Rockbox when they download it... something like A or something like B?  The AA fonts actually help to make it look a lot more professionally designed...  I'm not saying that particular theme should be the default... just that the 8-point non-AA font, gray on gray, with the illegible "NOW PLAYING" header that isn't even readable when zoomed... No slight intended to the creator of the existing theme... maybe other devices have lovely default themes with AA fonts?

[[Saint]]

I went down this route a while ago...

It is, somewhat difficult, to say the least.

Unless there's a change in the way fonts are handled by the build system.

To be able to do this, there is essentially two choices:

1 - a list of "recipes" for font conversion to be passed as required
2 - a pre-built set of fonts in the source repo (which would be truly, truly, truly massive if we cared at all about extensive locale support - which we really should).

In saying that, I don't think we should be worrying too hard about this. Its terribly subjective.

Rockbox gives users the power to make the changes they desire, if they desire it, for now I think our main concern is supplying a default theme that is uniform when compared to other supported targets.

If we are going to change one theme, we'll need to change them all...otherwise we won't have a default theme anymore.

Frankly, the only issue I see with the example given is the now playing banner in the .wps, which is almost certainly a product of hasty resizing and can be fixed with relative ease. That's no biggie.


[Saint]

[ZincAlloy]

I mean... here is the first impression of the current default theme for the Sansa Clip Zip... and an AA font theme called Cleanscreen... which do we want to be people's first impression of Rockbox when they download it... something like A or something like B?  The AA fonts actually help to make it look a lot more professionally designed... 

I disagree. AA looks good on big fonts. For small type, pixel fonts without AA look best because they're much sharper.
The default theme on Clip Zip doesn't look unprofessional because the font isn't anti aliased. The problem is that there is no space between the lines.



Much better, don't you think?

[toehser]

Significantly better, yes; but...

personally, I think the CleanScreen is still far better than the shot you posted.

I think part of my issue boils down to "how small should fonts be on a 1.1" screen?"

I'd be interested to see your example with a font even just 1 point larger.

I can understand the thinking "the screen is so small, we should make the fonts really small, so it still fits a common about of data".

But my thinking is, "we should display less information and require more scrolling, and still have it readable without a 30x loupe".

Just as an aside, the OF displays WAY bigger fonts and fewer lines - personally, I think it is nice to have 8 readable lines instead of 6 - but taking it to 12 is WAY too small for me.

Since Rockbox gives the options to customize, the question is, what should be the DEFAULT for a first-time user, and what should be the settings that users who DO NOT customize are stuck with?

I would say a MIDDLE GROUND - not the giant 6-lines of huge fonts like the OF, not the teensy-tiny-squashed 12 lines we currently have.  Not the giant curvy font of the OF, but also not the fine faint thin squinty font of sysfont.  To my (subjective, aesthetic, personal) judgement, our current default look is off to one edge of the spectrum - not in the middle ground... ijs...

Now, I'll admit, although I *do* like the AA fonts better in the sizes shown in Cleanscreen, probably a NON-AA font could still meet my design preferences for a larger font default...

[ZincAlloy]

Actually the default font is exactly 1 pixel taller than the sample I posted (capitals are 6px tall). The height of the font is alright. The line spacing is what makes it unusable for me.
This one is also 6 px tall,but the y's and g's go a little lower and it's easier to read as it's wider:



I like them a bit narrower on the ClipZip's screen with this theme, though. With album art things get thight on the wps and a wide font means lots of horizontal scrolling.
Tall fonts mean having less items on the screen when scrolling through lists - and one usually goes through many long lists when using Rockbox. Personally I think it's a reasonably sized font for the ClipZip's screen. Readability is not an issue at all.

None of these fonts is suitable for a default theme, though. They just don't have enough characters.