Cleanscreen theme (96 x 96 - Clip Zip)

[Greg T.]

This thread is for discussion related to my Cleanscreen theme for the Sansa Clip Zip, found here: http://themes.rockbox.org/index.php?themeid=1850&target=sansaclipzip

I designed this theme to be simple, functional, and attractive. On the While Playing Screen, it provides only the most desired information, using a medium-sized open sourced anti-aliased font (SourceSansPro, included). It displays album art only when you change volume or pause or lock the device. On the FM Screen, the theme does not display RDS information (it's too buggy), but it will display any available preset information. After selecting this theme, you may need to restart your device. When you want to connect to your PC via USB, you may need to switch to another theme, such as rockbox_failsafe. (Rockbox has a known issue in this regard with the Clip Zip.) In designing this I drew upon the work of many others, especially Ludovic Jakimon (aka lebellium) and Nick Peskett.

Other notes:

- In my opinion, the theme works best with the scrolling settings (Settings -> General Settings -> Display -> Scrolling) adjusted as follows:

     - Scroll Speed: 16
     - Scroll Step Size: 1 px

- The battery and FM signal icons are color-coded in green-yellow-red fashion, but not equally between the three colors. Instead, green is 50% and yellow and red are 25% apiece.

- The WPS displays album art when locked or changing volume (or dummy art, if album art isn't available). This is configurable. By commenting and uncommenting marked lines in the WPS, it is possible to not show album art when changing volume or when locked.

- If there is no artist ID3 tag, the WPS will display the album artist ID3 tag instead. If this yields nothing, then it will use the second directory from the end of file path.

- If there is no track title ID3 tag, the WPS will display the filename, without the file extension.

- If there is no album name ID3 tag, the WPS will display the first directory from the end of the file path.

- If there is no date ID3 tag, the WPS will rearrange the remaining information so that it is still properly spaced on the page.

I'll monitor this thread for bug reports, but I'll be less inclined to pursue enhancement requests. I drew extensively from the work of others in coming up with this theme, and I'm posting it in part so that someone may use it to help roll their own theme, which is simple enough to do.

2014/3/7 - Version 1.1: Minor changes made to work with the current build (thanks to lebellium), and minor changes made to the volume indicator.

[toehser]

I'd like to use your fonts, but with some modifications - are they converted directly from the Adobe SIL Open Font License files?  Any chance you (or anyone) could help with what I want to do - create a version without the leading at the top...

Basically, the fonts include a couple of pixels of space at the top, for line spacing... but some places, I don't want or need that, if there is already sufficient space above the viewport in question...  I'd rather have fonts (in general, all of them, hint hint hint) not include space at the top, and use viewport spacing for each line...  Or, maybe I'll patch rockbox to allow chopping a viewport at the top not bottom... that would give the same effect...

That is, right now, if I draw a 12-pixel font into an 11-pixel-high viewport, it is always the BOTTOM that gets cut off...  But there are cases for BOTH:

- If you're drawing a line under some space (think, a line starting at the 17th pixel of the Clip Zip, which automatically has 2 dead rows of pixels over it...) you don't want the inter-line leading that is included in the fonts.

- If you're drawing a line that is known not to have descenders (think, timers and numbers and such) you might want to cut off the bottom, not to waste space for descenders that can never occur.

- Or, you might want to do BOTH - cut off the top couple and bottom couple of pixels...

Since Rockbox won't let me do funny z-order things with viewports, or control alignment vertically within viewport, I think I have to make my own version of the font...

I'm guessing this means scripting FontForge to do something fancy to every single glyph?

Any advice from those experienced with FontForge would be *most welcome*...

[Greg T.]

See this for more on the fonts I used: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,43098.msg219080.html#msg219080

It's no picnic to convert fonts. The reason you don't see more AA fonts is more technical than license-related. I wound up having to install VirtualBox, download a virtual machine with a Rockbox development environment pre-installed (see here: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/DevelopmentGuide#Virtual_Machine_40Strongly_Recommended_41), and downloaded and compiled the convttf tool. If that sounds simple, believe me, it most certainly is not.

If you actually get to the point of running convttf, there's enough info on it out there to allow you to experiment with it. It's fast and easy to use, and it includes the ability to do at least some of the things you mention in your post, I believe.

[toehser]

I won't have trouble with the technical side, I'm a developer and Linux aficionado with already a working development toolset.

I notice your screenshot has WPFW 89.3 - are you local to the DC area?  I'm in Bethesda.

It looks like you may have already done what I wanted?

I see fonts called, for instance, 14-NotoSans-Bold.fnt - which seems to have "no top" - and it is named "noto..." - so I'm guessing that stands for "No Top"?

That might just solve my problem... Thanks!

[Greg T.]

Sorry for the delayed response. Noto is the name of the font, but I've no idea why. And yes indeed, I live in DC.

[toehser]

My guess was completely wrong.

It turns out, the name of the Noto fonts, is short for "No Tofu".

I found this: 'When text is rendered by a computer, sometimes there will be characters in the text that can not be displayed, because no font that supports them is available to the computer. When this occurs, small boxes are shown to represent the characters. We call those small boxes “tofu,” and we want to remove tofu from the Web. This is how the Noto font families got their name.'

Who would have thunk it...

[lebellium]

Hey Greg,

Maybe you didn't notice but several themes including yours are no longer working due to new theme engine restrictions introduced in January 2014: http://git.rockbox.org/?p=rockbox.git;a=commit;h=4e1c690

I fixed your code in WPS (line 118) and FMS (line 55). See the files in attachment.

Would be nice if you could update it on the theme website   

[Greg T.]

Wow. I hadn't heard about the change (so thank you) and of course I hadn't proceeded with the fix either (so thank you again). So you're doubly awesome. I'll get on to posting the updates in the next couple days.

[Greg T.]

I've updated the theme to work with the current build, and added two new Cleanscreen themes for the Sansa Clip Zip as well.

[lebellium]

Heh good job! 

[lynnux]

I've updated the theme to work with the current build, and added two new Cleanscreen themes for the Sansa Clip Zip as well.

Thanks for the new HighContrast theme!  I'm a runner as well, and your Cleanscreen theme was already the best for my use, now it's even better.