Scroll pHAT HD font editor?

thediveo · 2017-03-30 15:56:31 UTC

Is there any tool (besides the obvious vim or emacs) to design a new font for the Scroll pHAT HD?

gadgetoid · 2017-03-30 16:04:10 UTC

Any application which can produce a greyscale PNG should suffice. You can then use mkfont.py to turn that into a font file:

github.com

pimoroni/scroll-phat-hd/blob/master/tools/mkfont.py

import os
import sys
import numpy

try:
    from PIL import Image
except ImportError:
    exit("This script requires the pillow module\nInstall with: sudo pip install pillow")

FONT_FILE = "5x7-font.png"

SHEET_WIDTH = 16
SHEET_HEIGHT = 16

FONT_WIDTH = 5
FONT_HEIGHT = 7

CHAR_SPACING_X = 2
CHAR_SPACING_Y = 2
MARGIN_X = 2

This file has been truncated. show original

Change the values in the top of the script to suit your particular font layout:

FONT_FILE = "5x7-font.png"

SHEET_WIDTH = 16
SHEET_HEIGHT = 16

FONT_WIDTH = 5
FONT_HEIGHT = 7

CHAR_SPACING_X = 2
CHAR_SPACING_Y = 2
MARGIN_X = 2
MARGIN_Y = 2

CHAR_START = 0x00
CHAR_END = 0xff

Then run mkfont.py > mynewfont.py

Which, if I remember correctly, should produce you a fully functional font file you can dump into: https://github.com/pimoroni/scroll-phat-hd/tree/master/library/scrollphathd/fonts

thediveo · 2017-03-30 16:06:21 UTC

Thank you very much for this quick and concise reply! Now that’s a convenient toolchain; so off to the drawing board, erm, Gimp.