Category Archives: GLCD Fonts

Creating A GLCD Font

Standard Edition , Update V3.7c

Bitmap2LCD can generate two different types of GLCD Fonts :

System Fonts : Fonts of the Operating System, like .TTF (True Type Fonts) , .FON
Editable Fonts : Fonts you can edit yourself (modifying the pixels) from a system font source, or Fonts you can create from scratch.

There are ANSI Fonts (system) , Unicode Fonts (system) and Editable Fonts (custom)

Choose the main menu GLCD Fonts tab, and click Enter Font Script Mode item to enter Font Creation Mode

Data Setting Parameters are located in Data tab. You can edit the values by clicking on parameter value of the parameter list, only when in Font Script Mode and with Standard Edition.

At the top of the font panel , the caption includes [Font Script Mode] when in Font creation Mode. Use the Door Icon Button to exit this mode when willing to quit.

Enter Font Script Mode

In Font Script Mode (see caption at the top) select a list of chars to export with the mouse (Orange arrow) or write or paste a list of characters into the field (blue arrow)

To delete the selected list , use the [Clr] button or the Clear Selected Chars List drop down menu item (Green arrow)

There are 3 different Font types : ANSI, Unicode or Editable (see Red Arrow)

A right side of the font panel, there’s a field where you can define the Font Export parameters (Purple arrows) in the Data tab -> See screenshot below

For example the Font Data Structure : Raw Font or Structured Font

NOTE : With Trial/Demo Version, there’s a limitation : Only Char “A” is generated as an example !

Example : Modifying a Font Generator Parameter

Buttons

Enter Font Script Mode

convert selected List of chars to GLCD data

Exit Font Script Mode

Font Settings

The Font Script (Red Arrow) can be found in the Script (or Name.FSC) Tab of the Text editors. The script itself is not editable. The parameters can be set in the Font Panel, and the orientation of data generation and endianness at the top of the script (Blue Arrow)

The GLCD data generated can be found in the Text editor, first Editor tab on the left

Next screenshot shows a comment block at the right side that shows the character of the generated data. ( monochrome, 8 bit output only )

Rotating A GLCD font charset with Bitmap2LCD

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Bitmap2LCD is a tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems and a programmable text processing tool.

Rotating A GLCD font charset with Bitmap2LCD

Update V3.7c

Here’s an example on how to rotate a selected charset of a system font (90 degrees CW)

1. In the GLCD font main menu, click on the Enter font Script Mode item

2. Select the system Font, the font size and the fixed font option (Green Arrow)

3. Select the set of chars you want to rotate Inside the font panel, for example here ABCDE (Red Arrow)

4. in the Font Edition main menu , or on the Editors Panel click the Convert LCD Font script to an editable Font button ( Orange Arrow fig 1)

Answer to the dialogs, until you see the open editable button in the dialog

–> A .EFF (Editable Font File) has been created

Then, you can see the editable font chars in the char list (orange Arrow, fig. 2)

5. Rotate the chars 90 degrees clockwise (Purple Arrow )

–> The font has been rotated

6. Convert Font Script to Data ( Yellow Arrow)

7. Job done !

Bitmap2LCD :: Generating International Fonts / Characters

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Bitmap2LCD is a tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems and a programmable graphic and text processing tool.

Bitmap2LCD :: Generate International Fonts / Characters

Standard Edition Update V3.7c

There are different ways to select the Unicode characters to generate GLCD Font data.

Enter Font Script Mode ( in the GLCD Font Main Menu ) , select the Unicode mode , the font, the font Size and Unicode Block.
Select the Chars to export with the mouse inside the grid ( Are selected = Teal Color )
Generate Data

way to generate GLCD Fonts, for example when more than 256 Chars :

Enter Font Script Mode ( in the GLCD Font Main Menu ) , select the Unicode mode , the font, the font Size and Unicode Block.
Enable the Address Range Selection (red Arrow)
Enter the Start and End Hexadecimal Addresses ( From Hex and To Hex )
Generate Data

Then read the font script (see below) for the other settings to be defined first to generate Font Data : The data orientation, the endianness, the Font Size, if fixed or variable length etc…

Families of Fonts in Bitmap2LCD

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Families of Fonts in Bitmap2LCD

Bitmap2LCD is a software tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems and a programmable text and graphic processing tool.

Update V3.7c

With Bitmap2LCD , you can of course write text and place symbols and glyphs inside the WORK CANVAS. by the way, Some system fonts families ARE collection of glyphs. You can find fonts on specialized websites like dafont.com and easily install them on you computer.

With Bitmap2LCD Standard Edition, you can also generate GLCD fonts to data arrays, in other words, convert the matrix of pixels of the glyphs into hexadecimal data.

Families of Fonts

ANSI FONTS

Generate GLCD Fonts from System Fonts ( Glyphs are not editable )

Open / create a Font Quit Font Script Mode

Directly select chars to convert to data inside the ASCII grid

UNICODE FONTS ( International Characters Sets )

Generate GLCD Fonts from Unicode System Fonts ( Glyphs are not editable )

Open / create a Font Quit Font Script Mode

EDITABLE FONTS ( Freely Editable Fonts )

Create glyphs from scratch or export Chars from a System Font ( Glyphs are editable )

List Editable Fonts Create Editable Font From Scratch

Quit Editable Font Script Mode

ANTI-ALIASED FONTS

Generate anti-aliased Fonts, except in monochrome, 8 and 16 colors modes

Other buttons related to Fonts

Create GLCD Font Data inside Text Editor

Export Selected Chars of a System Font to an Editable Font

Export the selected Char in the ASCII Grid to the WORK CANVAS

Bitmap2LCD : Info About The System Font Generator

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Info About the System Font Generator

Standard Edition

Update V3.7c

Bitmap2LCD is a software tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems and a programmable text and graphic processing tool.

Bitmap2lcd generates GLCD FONTS from UNICODE and ANSI SYSTEM FONTS ( fonts currently installed in Windows ) and from EDITABLE FONTS, chars and symbols you can create yourself. Chars of a System Font can be exported to EDITABLE FONTS to be freely editable.

Font Chars can also be stretched. ( See below, the panel above the displayed Character A )

Info about Fonts in Bitmap2LCD

To Generate GLCD Font , ENTER and QUIT the Font Creation Mode, click the following buttons or the associated main menu items :

Reload / Create Font Script

Exit Special Mode > Exit Font Script

Generate the GLCD FONT DATA as defined in the FONT SCRIPT

Fig 1. At the left side, the FONT PANEL and and the right side, the FONT SCRIPT located in one of the TEXT EDITORS

Blue arrow : The FONT SCRIPT is NOT a directly editable script. The purple Parameters displayed are defined with all the other arrows shown on the above screenshot.

Yellow Arrow : Select the SYSTEM Font , the Font Size, ANSI or UNICODE Chars ( script > Font Script Filename, Type, Name and Size )

Orange Arrow: Select the chars to generate in the ASCII Grid. Selected Chars are displayed in Color Aqua Blue. To clear all the selected chars in one click, click the Aqua Blue <Clr> button in the bar of icons. ( script > Selected Chars List )

Red Arrow: Font Height and Width limitations. A the right side, you can change from FIXED to VARIABLE LENGTH FONT. ( script > Font Size )

Green Arrow: Here you can move and frame all the chars in four directions. ( script > Font Size )

Purple Arrow: Here You select the direction of the GLCD Font data ( script > Font Orientation )

FONT SCRIPTS (blue arrow) are saved to disk as [.FSC] files, and can easily be reloaded from inside the FILE EXPLORER (fig 2.). There’s a dedicated FONTS Folder (red arrow) . The font files there are filtered.

Example of Generated GLCD DATA for monochrome Display (Fixed Length 5×7 Font, Vertical Data Output)

/* @ 0 Char:’A’ Width in bits :5 */

0x20, /* __#_____ */

0x50, /* _#_#____ */

0x70, /* _###____ */

0x88, /* #___#___ */

0x00, /* ________ */

/* @ 7 Char:’B’ Width in bits :5 */

0xE0, /* ###_____ */

0x90, /* #__#____ */

0xE0, /* ###_____ */

0x90, /* #__#____ */

0xE0, /* ###_____ */

0x00, /* ________ */

Export Font Data to Binary File : Data Structure

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Bitmap2LCD is a tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems and a programmable graphic and text processing tool.

Export Font Data to Binary File : Data Structure

Standard Edition , Update V4,0

When you export the Font Script to a Binary File, the data array is sent to the Hex Editor and saved as a .hex to Disk. ( For example for Data storage in EEprom )

Output + Settings Main Menu :

See below the data structure inside the Hex Editor.

In the following example the generated Font is Arial Unicode Size 10 , ANSI, Selected Chars are A B and C

Structure :

1st Line , red area 00 03 = Number of chars (decimal)

2nd Line, Character Info between 55 AA …. AA 55

00 01 Type of Font >> 0001 = ANSI >> 0002 = UNICODE >> 0003 Editable Font

00 36 Char Data Count (decimal)

00 10 Char Width (decimal)

00 18 Char Height (decimal)

00 2D Char ASCII ( Optional > ANSI, Editable font ) or Unicode Char Address (hex)

00 50 First Address Next Char (hex)

Blue Area = Char Pixels data

Green Area = Data Filler, Forces next Char to begin from line begin

Bitmap2LCD Stretching the Chars of a Font

Bitmap2LCD is a tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems and a programmable graphic and text processing tool.

Stretching A Font

Update V3.7c

In the Font Panel there is a small Panel for stretching a GLCD Font (blue Arrow) , in width or/and in Height with the possibility to shift the stretched chars along the Y axis.

The “Stretch” checkbox enables or disables the stretching.

This features works when generating a Font, in the font script special mode and when exporting a system font to an editable Font.

GLCD Font Output formats : Raw or Struct

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Bitmap2LCD is a tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems.

GLCD Font Output formats : Raw or Struct

Standard Edition, Update V3.7c

From release V2.4d , you can choose between two types of font data output, bitmaps in a raw data array or a C tfont structure

Check (raw) or uncheck (struct) the raw/-struct checkbox in the configuration settings panel

Version 3.7 +

C language tfont structure in stuct font output mode :

typedef struct {
long int code;
const tImage *image;
} tChar;
typedef struct {
int length;
const tChar *chars;
} tFont;

Previous Versions :

Version 3.0 +

Before Version 3.0 +

Import a Unicode Character into Work Canvas

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Bitmap2LCD is a tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems.

Import a Unicode Character into Work Canvas

Update V3.7c

Open then Font Panel and select a Unicode Font, here for example Greek
Create a text frame and mouse click at top left text location in the work Canvas -> a red frame area appears (see red arrow)
Select a char in the Font Panel grid (yellow Arrow) and click the export button (black arrow) OR double-click on the char in the Font Panel grid (yellow Arrow)
When finished, move the Text frame to its location , and Paste the Text Area with keyboard key Enter or the Paste button.

Graphic LCD and International Fonts and Characters

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Bitmap2LCD is a tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems and a programmable graphic and text processing tool.

International Fonts and Characters

Update V3.7c

Quote :

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems. Developed in conjunction with the Universal Character Set standard and published as The Unicode Standard, the latest version of Unicode contains a repertoire of more than 110,000 characters covering 100 scripts and multiple symbol sets. The standard consists of a set of code charts for visual reference, an encoding method and set of standard character encoding, a set of reference data computer files, and a number of related items, such as character properties, rules for normalization, decomposition, collation, rendering, and bidirectional display order (for the correct display of text containing both right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, and left-to-right scripts).

Source :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode

The standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium.

http://www.unicode.org/

// Quote

To access the international characters, open the Font panel, select the Unicode fonts (blue arrow)

Select the Font ( for example Arial Unicode MS ) (yellow arrow) and the Unicode Block (in this example Thai )

To have an overview of the Unicode block names, addresses, types and language, select the Unicode List tab and click on the List Unicode Information Table button (red arrow)

Overview of the Unicode Blocks

The information of the selected block (red arrow below) are located in the Unicode Info Tab (yellow arrow)

The available information are the number of chars of the selected block, the number of sub-Blocks, if the number of chars exceeds 256 chars ( size of the grid ) , the address range of the chars ( from – To ) , the block type and the block language if specified.

If the number of chars in the block exceeds 256, there are buttons to navigate in the sub-blocks of the block (blue arrow)

Bitmap2LCD Software Tool Blog :: about GLCD displays and Programming

Help Topics / Image to array converter / Graphic LCD Font Editor / GLCD Animation / Graphic LCD Programming / Text file Processing

Category Archives: GLCD Fonts

Creating A GLCD Font

Creating A GLCD Font

Rotating A GLCD font charset with Bitmap2LCD

Rotating A GLCD font charset with Bitmap2LCD

Bitmap2LCD :: Generating International Fonts / Characters

Bitmap2LCD is a tool for programming small Graphic LCDs in embedded systems and a programmable graphic and text processing tool.

Bitmap2LCD :: Generate International Fonts / Characters

Families of Fonts in Bitmap2LCD

Families of Fonts in Bitmap2LCD

Families of Fonts

Other buttons related to Fonts

Bitmap2LCD : Info About The System Font Generator

Info About the System Font Generator

Example of Generated GLCD DATA for monochrome Display (Fixed Length 5×7 Font, Vertical Data Output)

Export Font Data to Binary File : Data Structure

Export Font Data to Binary File : Data Structure

Bitmap2LCD Stretching the Chars of a Font

Stretching A Font

GLCD Font Output formats : Raw or Struct

GLCD Font Output formats : Raw or Struct

Import a Unicode Character into Work Canvas

Import a Unicode Character into Work Canvas