Support and General Use > Theming and Appearance Customization

New taller sysfont

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iPodVT:
I was concerned when I saw on the "Recent activity - Code" webpage  that the sysfont designation for ipodvideo/ipod6g has been changed to use a taller font.  Today I installed the latest dev build that includes that change and, sure as shootin', the bottom part of the text in theme's status bar is cut off.  Now I have to either add a font specification to my .sbs file as well as everywhere else where the sysfont was assumed to be static, or else I will have to reposition every one of the very tightly placed elements on all of my screens.

Which font was formerly the sysfont and which one is the new sysfont?

Was any consideration given to the likelihood of this predictable impact?

iPodVT:
Is there a setting by which the user can specify a custom sysfont?  If not, might such a setting be added to Rockbox?  I'm not finding anything in the manual re such a setting, nor what the sysfont actually is.

chris_s:
Which theme is this?

As far as I'm aware, this cannot be adjusted by the user. Not sure if there's a reason this couldn't be turned into a setting.

Have to admit, testing the patch, personally, I didn't look at custom themes using the default status bar. The default (and thus previous) sysfont is 08-Schumacher-Clean. Which has now been changed to 14-Rockbox-Mix on the Ipod video/6g.
The Eros Q was apparently already using that font, so presumably has trouble displaying any themes that expect the sysfont size to be 8, as well.

speachy:
SYSFONT is compiled-in font of last resort.  It is limited to 250 glyphs, and really isn't intended to be _used_ by normal stuff at runtime due to it not having much language coverage.

The default statusbar is set to the same height as the SYSFONT, because SYSFONT is used to render stuff like the battery percentage or volume level.  That assumption needs to be broken, but at the same times, themes that don't include their own themed status bar shouldn't be making assumptions about how large the default status bar is.

In the short term the default sysfont size will probably be reverted while we try to figure out a better path forward.  But in the end, I don't expect we'll be able to avoid breaking themes that contain hardcoded assumptions about external assets.

iPodVT:
Thanks very much for your reply.


--- Quote from: chris_s on March 05, 2025, 01:44:52 PM ---Which theme is this?

--- End quote ---

Sorry - I left off the word "my" - it should have read "... the bottom part of the text in my theme's status bar is cut off."  I've been developing my theme for a few years - it's not yet ready for publication and might never be.  But even so, changing something as fundamental as the sysfont without advance notice is not what I would expect given the huge number of already published (and possibly affected) themes.

I fully acknowledge that the new sysfont is much more readable, so it is an improvement and I would like to incorporate it.  I guess that all font usage in all themes should explicitly specify a named font rather than making assumptions re sysfont if that is something that could get changed (again) in the future.

In comparing the default cabbiev2 theme on one iPod that uses the new dev build and new sysfont vs a slightly older cabbiev2 on another iPod using a recent dev build with the former sysfont, the height of the status bar appears to have been increased and the menus of long lists in the database and file browsers appear to have been slightly lowered, and yet those long lists still fit properly in the available vertical space, so that is good.  I do notice that the PLAY/PAUSE/STOP icons in cabbiev2's status bar are not properly placed vertically with the new sysfont dev build.

I don't think that adding/using/requiring a user specified sysfont setting is the right solution in this situation.  If the new sysfont is here to stay (and therefore might get changed again in the future), then my theme (as well as all others that are similarly affected) must be adjusted accordingly so as to not make assumptions re the amount of display space that 'sysfont' will use.  This brings up a few other questions:  does the new sysfont also use more horizontal space than the former sysfont?  Which font is used for displaying the database and file browsers' lists?  They don't appear to have changed (though I'm not confident re my perceptions of that), so I assume they're not using "sysfont".  Is there another generalized name (maybe "listfont"?) that is used for them?

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