UFL 1 font...

[Jonathan Busby]

I've become interested in the UFL 1 4x6 tiny font after a discussion with a fellow HP48 friend and hacker. I'm in the process of creating a vector TTF for this font. I'm using lines instead of Bezier splines, but I may switch to splines.

As part of this project, I was prompted to render the original UFL 1 font on my 4K UHD display. To that end I've created a small FreeImage library utility function in ISO / ANSI / POSIX C that renders an input string into a properly sized and column wrapped PNG file.

Here's an example of the rendered raw UFL 1 4x6 tiny font, although enlarged ( with no interpolation ) by a factor of four :



And here's the original ( also attached... ) :



( The small C app is attached... It's also been uploaded to HPcalc.org, but it will probably be a while before Eric updates the site... )

What are your thoughts? Any helpers, recommendations or tips for the TTF font would be welcome.

Regards,

Jonathan

[Jonathan Busby]

(09-14-2023 06:34 PM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  Of course you know there is FONTMINI.TTF

Didn't know that Thanks for the tip I've looked at said TTF font file and it looks like a quasi-bitmapped font that doesn't use any type of interpolation, such as Bezier splines or lines... So, it can be improved upon...

Regards,

Jonathan

[Martin Hepperle]

In the past I have used FontForge to create some fonts based on bitmapped fonts.
FontForge has a scripting interface so that you can write a e.g. Python program to read a bitmap font and recreate the pixels as vector objects.

This is at least a good starting point as creating 256 glyphs is quite some work.
Of course this automatic process does not included details like hints.

Martin

[Jonathan Busby]

(09-15-2023 02:31 PM)Martin Hepperle Wrote:  In the past I have used FontForge to create some fonts based on bitmapped fonts.
FontForge has a scripting interface so that you can write a e.g. Python program to read a bitmap font and recreate the pixels as vector objects.

Thanks for the info I'm not quite sure if anyone really wants a UFL 1 minifont based vector
TTF, at least from the equivocal poll. But, it's nice to know that there's a scripting
interface available -- although I prefer Perl

Quote:This is at least a good starting point as creating 256 glyphs is quite some work.

Well, in the UFL 1 minifont, a large portion of those 256 bitmaps are blank.

Quote:Of course this automatic process does not included details like hints.

Yep. The devil's in the proverbial details as they say...

Regards,

Jonathan

P.S. Attached as an updated small C app that renders the UFL 1 minifont but correctly handles newlines... I've also uploaded it to HPcalc.org...