Graphic LCD programming

Assuming you are not inventing a new language, the problem of developing a 5x7 matrix font has been solved, probably 10^12 times or more. You might be amazed what you would find if you searched for, say "5x7 lcd font source code".

And the rest of your answers can be found with one, maybe two minutes of Google time as well.

A step up from 5x7, but still Pixel Fonts :

I did find this page a while ago

These target fine-web-design, and I could not find info on converting them to ROM tables, or about the Char WIDTHS (they do give the heights, 10-22 pixels )

Has anyone used these fonts, and put them into ROMs?

-jg

Not those specific fonts but there are tools (of course!) to automate generating font maps and jump tables.

The bog-standard 5x7 LCD font can easily be done by hand, with reference to the LCD manufacturer's docs if necessary. E.g., the Optrex "Dot Matrix Character LCD Module User's Manual"

For higher-res fonts, tools like BitFontCreator Pro come in handy:

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

Notice that the font examples they use on the "info" page to show the jagged edges 5 x 10 including the descenders. I'm not sure how their fonts are different. I guess they are of a fixed size while the other fonts get worse as you shrink them to "small" size.

Aren't there fixed size fonts standard with Windows, like "system" for example? I think they provide two different sizes and no matter what size you ask for, you get one the the two fixed sizes.

Rick

to

give

One of the most original methods of doing this is to use Excel. The ide originally was presented in EDN by Alberto Ricci Bitti "Excel offer painless LCD initialization":

I suggested an improvement as a follow-up design idea, allowing use selectable character size, automatic code generation and a selection o horizontal or vertical scanning:

Chapter 5 of my book develops this idea further allowing for doubl clicking to turn pixels on and off and a better visualization of th character. "Excel by Example: A Microsoft Excel Cookbook for Electronics Engineers published by Elsevier/Newnes, ISBN 0750677562

-Aubrey Kagan

You can check the code available at the site for color lcd interfacing

p://spam.googlepages.com/spam

No you can't.

They have a range of pixel-maps, and they specify the Y axis, from

7 thru 20 (varies with font), but I cannot find the X axis size. (which seems to vary within a font, as they do narrow/std/bold)

As a step-up from the 5x7, and even 8x16(7x14) sizes, they should render and zoom better then the vanilla fonts. (but of course, need more storage..)

We already use a fixed 8x8 and (8x16)(7x14) font, but that does not scale too well, so something a step up from a single stroke, small pixel count looked to be better. The problem was, fonts such as those above did not have enough info to easily calculate a ROM size, or an obvious ROM pathway.

I've asked them again, now this has reminded me....

-jg

Yes, but each one is fixed. These are the old bit mapped fonts that only work at one size regardless of how you change your display parameters.

They may be a bit larger, but I don't see how they are any different. In fact, that seems to be their claim to fame, they *are* bit mapped fonts to use in graphical images rather than directly on web pages and such.

I don't get what you mean about scaling. Fixed size fonts *don't* scale. That is why they invented the TrueType and other scalable fonts.

Rick

interfacing

That was not a spam.The site does have a code containing hex code for

5x7 fonts.You can use GLCD font creator also.

With Regards.

Our use is less common: We want to have smaller fonts (8x16 is ok here) for close reading, and then scale that x2, x3, x4, x5 etc, for more distant reading of few critical variables. This works now by scaling the 8x16 - and it is 100% functional, but gets a tad 'chunky'.....

So, we need a Pixel Font, but with a larger 'tile', that 'looks nicer', but we do not have as many pixels, ROM space, (or rendering power) as a Windows PC. I think a 24x16 tile, with a soft-define on dX,dY should give good results. My guess is that most of the fonts on

will be inside this.

I did find FontForge, which looks possible, but it is not a native windows application -

Has anyone every used FontForge ?

-jg

I did a set of 5x7 characters a while back - ISTR the complete ASCII printable set and a few odds and ends (pound sign, euro, and a few Greek letters). My code was in the right format for the DIP packaged serial displays (one byte per column) but that was generated from a simple format with awk. It should be relatively easy to generate any other format.

Don't have the code handy right now. I'll post a link to it when I get home since creating a charset is infuriating, time-consuming numpty work.

--
Andrew Smallshaw
andrews@sdf.lonestar.org