Combining fonts (Nimbus with unicode support!)

[azn63237]

Hello,

I'm looking to make a nimbus font with Japanese, Korean, and Chinese characters to use alongside the Podtwo theme. I was wondering how to combine the English character in 19-Nimbus.fnt with the Asian characters in Unifont ?

I tried using FontForge and convert to fnt with no success. Would anyone have any pointers? Thank you!

[azn63237]

I found a hacky way to do this:

First, I downloaded 19-Nimbus.bdf from the rockbox source code. This contains only the English characters. It's in size 19.

Then, I downloaded the 16-GNU-Unifont.bdf. This covers most of the characters from all major languages. It's in size 16.

I opened both files in a notepad, and manually copy the "header" part and all the CHARSET that are in 19-Nimbus into 16-GNU-Unifont. The files are not difficult to understand! Use ENCODING to tell which character is which. And remember to include ENDFONT at the very end.

Finally, use convertbdf to convert the combined file to fnt. (I used the Windows binary)



Again, this method is obviously not perfect as it combine two sizes with no regards to the spacing. For now, it suits my needs. If anyone can find a better way to do this. Please do let me know! Thank you.

19-Nimbus-16-Unifont.bdf
19-Nimbus-16-Unifont.fnt

[azn63237]

If you are specifically using the PodTwo or PodBlue theme, they actually use 14-Nimbus in addition to 19-Nimbus (for the bottom bar).

You can display CJK characters at the bottom bar using the fnt downloaded from this patch. And change the # Preload Font in the wps and sbs

[Dook]

I've combined fonts using fontforge a few times for rockbox, though I work from otf and ttf files usually, my notes may be of use to you?

[azn63237]

Thanks for the guide. My problem is that I cannot find the Nimbus used in rockbox in the otf format. And the Merge Font function doesn't work for .bdf files.

Here is a relevant discussion. I managed to find the otf files of the ghostscript standard font pack, but the Nimbus font in that pack is not the one I'm looking for.