[Kindle Touch] Font Hack

[ixtab]

Originally Posted by Antoinekamel

... I would love that the lovely people here upload more fonts ready to the (wonderful!) hack...

It is really really (really!) simple to create your own font package, you don't have to wait for others to do it.

All you have to do is find the 4 correct .ttf files, rename them to "MyFont Regular.ttf", "MyFont Bold.ttf", "MyFont Bold Italic.ttf", and "MyFont Italic.ttf", respectively. Then put them in a folder named "MyFont", and copy that folder to your Kindle. That's all you have to do. Substitute "MyFont" with the correct font name, of course.

As a courtesy for other people, you might want to zip up that folder, put it online somewhere (for instance by attaching it to a post here, as others did), and link to it from the Wiki.

[Antoinekamel]

Yes, Dear ixtab, I've read it in another post here and could do it yesterday night (very happy, let me say). I am having the problem with fonts you cited, but will make now only one folder of the favorite in each type.

What made me think Caecilia was different is that the one posted here by someone is changed, I think bigger, by the one who posted.

Thank you very much for this magic work!

[ixtab]

Originally Posted by Antoinekamel

Thank you very much for this magic work!

You're very welcome. But hey, careful with that lover's oath -- look up my name...

[yiming]

Originally Posted by ixtab

Alright, with the help of NiLuJe, bhaak, and varnie, I think I found a solution for most of the issues we're having.

I have packaged a new version of libfreetype.so. As far as I can see, this fixes the following issues:

• blank (completely empty) fonts don't occur anymore -- at least for me.
• actual font sizes of different fonts are much more homogeneous
• even the blanket screens (USB connected/update/restart messages) are now using the configured sans-serif font.

Download is here. Install/uninstall as usual. You may get weird behavior right after installation/uninstallation (I don't know why that is). Simply restart the Kindle once or twice more in that case.

Note that it is not an absolute requirement to install this. The Kindle and the Font hack app will obviously still work if it's not installed, but with a few known flaws.

thanks for the solution. the freetype font engine does solve most of the problems you mentioned. but it seems that a new problem has cropped up. Now the Condensed font doesn't work anymore. Please see these screen captures. The font for Regular and Condensed are the same. is it possible that it is caused by the freetype font engine.

the same old problem of no Condensed selection on the Font Hack menu is still there. not sure if it is again hidden because of the space constraint.

[ixtab]

Works perfectly here.

Originally Posted by yiming

The font for Regular and Condensed are the same. is it possible that it is caused by the freetype font engine.

the same old problem of no Condensed selection on the Font Hack menu is still there. not sure if it is again hidden because of the space constraint.

This is not a problem with the font engine, but because you're still using v1.0. Use v1.2 instead. This will fix both errors.

[yiming]

@ixtab:

the freetype font engine may create new problems, but it also unexpectedly helped solve a problem with Chinese font hacking.

i changed the Chinese fonts in my KT by creating this font config under /etc/fonts/conf.d:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>


<!-- sans serif -->
<match target="pattern" name="family">
	<test name="family">
		<string>Helvetica Neue LT</string>
	</test>
	<edit name="family" mode="append">
		<string>FZBoYaFangKanSongK bold</string>
	</edit>
</match>

<!-- serif -->
<match target="pattern" name="family">
        <test name="family">
                <string>Caecilia Regular</string>
        </test>
        <edit name="family" mode="append">
                <string>XHei</string>
        </edit>
</match>
                                                                

<!-- condensed -->
<match target="pattern" name="family">
        <test name="family">
                <string>condensed</string>
        </test>
        <edit name="family" mode="append">
                <string>FZShuSong-Z01</string>
        </edit>
</match>

</fontconfig>

as there is no native bold font included, the bold font is rendered by the KT. the result is the bold font will have a lot of "bleeding". this problem has been troubling those who hack their Chinese fonts for quite some time. but with the freetype engine provided by you the problem is solved! thank you so much.

[ixtab]

Originally Posted by yiming

@ixtab:

the freetype font engine may create new problems, but it also unexpectedly helped solve a problem with Chinese font hacking.

i change the Chinese fonts in my KT by creating this font config under /etc/fonts/conf.d:

The freetype engine doesn't create new problems

Does this config play nicely with fonthack, or does it interfere somehow? If it plays nicely: does it also work when put into /mnt/us/fonthack/ (instead of /etc/fonts/conf.d/), for instance with the filename 99-AAA-chinese.conf, or 99-zzz-chinese.conf? (try the bold one, it should work)

The reason why I'm asking is that this might be interesting for other chinese folks as well, and not everybody knows how to access the root partition.

[yiming]

Originally Posted by ixtab

The freetype engine doesn't create new problems

Does this config play nicely with fonthack, or does it interfere somehow? If it plays nicely: does it also work when put into /mnt/us/fonthack/ (instead of /etc/fonts/conf.d/), for instance with the filename 99-AAA-chinese.conf, or 99-zzz-chinese.conf? (try the bold one, it should work)

The reason why I'm asking is that this might be interesting for other chinese folks as well, and not everybody knows how to access the root partition.

thanks for the clarification. will try out your suggestions and report the results here.

[yiming]

@ixtab,

i've investigated the impact of the freetype engine again and found that it indeed will affect the Aa font selection.

i've tried with and without Font Hack 1.2 installed. In both cases, whenever the freetype engine was installed, the Condensed font selection would be disabled, ie, the font will remained as regular.

for these tests no Chinese font hack was presence.

do you think you can look into this problem? thanks.

[ixtab]

As I previously said, I have already looked into it, and everything -- including condensed font -- works perfectly with 1.2 + libfreetype.



In other words, I cannot reproduce your problem.

Can anybody else who has everything installed please try this and report back the results?

PS: To troubleshoot, try re-initializing the font cache, then running "FC_DEBUG=1025 fc-match -s condensed". For me, this is the output it gives:

FC_DEBUG=1025
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/fonts.conf
	Scanning config dir /etc/fonts/conf.d
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/00-fonthack.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/99-condensed.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-fix-globaladvance.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-unhint-small-vera.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/30-urw-aliases.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/40-nonlatin.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/45-latin.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/49-sansserif.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/50-user.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/51-local.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/local.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/60-latin.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/65-fonts-persian.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/65-nonlatin.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/69-unifont.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/80-delicious.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/90-synthetic.conf
	Loading config file /etc/fonts/conf.d/99-fonthack.conf
	Scanning config dir /mnt/us/fonthack
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-Averia.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-DejaVu Sans Condensed.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-DejaVu Sans Mono.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-DejaVu Serif Condensed.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-DejaVu Serif.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-Fertigo Pro.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-Georgia.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-Museo.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-Ubuntu Mono.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/00-Ubuntu.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/99-monospace.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/99-sansserif.conf
	Loading config file /mnt/us/fonthack/99-serif.conf
FC_DEBUG=1025
Sort Pattern has 17 elts (size 32)
	family: "Averia"(w) "Fertigo Pro"(w) "Kindle Symbol"(w) "HeiseiMaruGoth_JIS0213_E"(w) "HangulGothicMTC-Medium_E"(w) "MHeiGB18030C-Medium_E"(w) "MHeiC-Medium-Big5HKSCS_E"(w) "Bitstream Vera Sans"(w) "DejaVu Sans"(w) "Verdana"(w) "Arial"(w) "Albany AMT"(w) "Luxi Sans"(w) "Nimbus Sans L"(w) "Helvetica"(w) "Lucida Sans Unicode"(w) "BPG Glaho International"(w) "Tahoma"(w) "Nachlieli"(w) "Lucida Sans Unicode"(w) "Yudit Unicode"(w) "Kerkis"(w) "ArmNet Helvetica"(w) "Artsounk"(w) "BPG UTF8 M"(w) "Waree"(w) "Loma"(w) "Garuda"(w) "Umpush"(w) "Saysettha Unicode"(w) "JG Lao Old Arial"(w) "GF Zemen Unicode"(w) "Pigiarniq"(w) "B Davat"(w) "B Compset"(w) "Kacst-Qr"(w) "Urdu Nastaliq Unicode"(w) "Raghindi"(w) "Mukti Narrow"(w) "malayalam"(w) "Sampige"(w) "padmaa"(w) "Hapax Berbère"(w) "MS Gothic"(w) "UmePlus P Gothic"(w) "SimSun"(w) "PMingLiu"(w) "WenQuanYi Zen Hei"(w) "WenQuanYi Bitmap Song"(w) "AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni"(w) "AR PL New Sung"(w) "MgOpen Modata"(w) "VL Gothic"(w) "IPAMonaGothic"(w) "IPAGothic"(w) "Sazanami Gothic"(w) "Kochi Gothic"(w) "AR PL KaitiM GB"(w) "AR PL KaitiM Big5"(w) "AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni"(w) "AR PL SungtiL GB"(w) "AR PL Mingti2L Big5"(w) "ＭＳ ゴシック"(w) "ZYSong18030"(w) "TSCu_Paranar"(w) "UnDotum"(w) "Baekmuk Dotum"(w) "Baekmuk Gulim"(w) "KacstQura"(w) "Lohit Bengali"(w) "Lohit Gujarati"(w) "Lohit Hindi"(w) "Lohit Marathi"(w) "Lohit Maithili"(w) "Lohit Kashmiri"(w) "Lohit Konkani"(w) "Lohit Nepali"(w) "Lohit Sindhi"(w) "Lohit Punjabi"(w) "Lohit Tamil"(w) "Meera"(w) "Lohit Malayalam"(w) "Lohit Kannada"(w) "Lohit Telugu"(w) "Lohit Oriya"(w) "LKLUG"(w) "FreeSans"(w) "Arial Unicode MS"(w) "Arial Unicode"(w) "Code2000"(w) "Code2001"(w) "sans-serif"(w) "Roya"(w) "Koodak"(w) "Terafik"(w)
	slant: 0(i)(s)
	weight: 100(i)(s)
	width: 100(i)(s)
	size: 12(f)(s)
	pixelsize: 12.5(f)(s)
	hintstyle: 3(i)(s)
	hinting: FcTrue(s)
	verticallayout: FcFalse(s)
	autohint: FcFalse(s)
	globaladvance: FcTrue(s)
	dpi: 75(f)(s)
	scale: 1(f)(s)
	lang: "de-DE"(s)
	fontversion: 2147483647(i)(s)
	embeddedbitmap: FcTrue(s)
	decorative: FcFalse(s)

First font Pattern has 19 elts (size 19)
	family: "Averia"(w)
	familylang: "en"(w)
	style: "Regular"(w)
	stylelang: "en"(w)
	fullname: "Averia-Regular"(w)
	fullnamelang: "en"(w)
	slant: 0(i)(w)
	weight: 100(i)(w)
	width: 100(i)(w)
	foundry: "unknown"(w)
	file: "/mnt/us/fonthack/Averia/Averia Regular.ttf"(w)
	index: 0(i)(w)
	outline: FcTrue(w)
	scalable: FcTrue(w)
	charset: 
	0000: 00000000 ffffffff ffffffff 7fffffff 00000000 ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff
	0001: 00000000 00020000 000c0006 61000003 00040000 00000000 00000000 00000000
	0002: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 3f0002c0 00000000
	0003: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 10000200 00000001 00000000
	0020: 77180000 06010047 00000010 00000000 00000000 00001000 00000000 00000000
	0021: 00000000 00000044 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
	0022: 46068044 00000800 00000100 00000031 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
	0025: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000400 00000000
(w)
	lang: aa|ast|ay|bi|br|ch|co|da|de|en|es|et|eu|fi|fj|fo|fr|fur|fy|gd|gl|gv|ho|ia|id|ie|io|is|it|lb|mg|nb|nds|nl|nn|no|nr|nso|oc|om|pt|rm|sma|smj|so|sq|ss|st|sv|sw|tl|tn|ts|uz|vo|vot|wa|xh|yap|zu|an|fil|ht|jv|kj|kwm|li|ms|ng|pap-an|pap-aw|rn|rw|sc|sg|sn|su|za(w)
	fontversion: 65536(i)(w)
	fontformat: "TrueType"(w)
	decorative: FcFalse(w)

Averia Regular.ttf: "Averia" "Regular"
Fertigo Pro Regular.ttf: "Fertigo Pro" "Regular"
Kindle_Symbol.ttf: "Kindle Symbol" "Normal"
HeiSeiMaruGoth213_E.ttf: "HeiseiMaruGoth_JIS0213_E" "Regular"
HangulGothMTC_E.ttf: "HangulGothicMTC-Medium_E" "Regular"
MHeiM18030_E.ttf: "MHeiGB18030C-Medium_E" "Regular"
MHeiM-Big5HKSCS_E.ttf: "MHeiC-Medium-Big5HKSCS_E" "Regular"
code2000.ttf: "Code2000" "Normal"
DejaVu Sans Mono Regular.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Regular"
DejaVu Serif Regular.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Regular"
Georgia Regular.ttf: "Georgia" "Regular"
Ubuntu Mono Regular.ttf: "Ubuntu Mono" "Regular"
Ubuntu Regular.ttf: "Ubuntu" "Regular"
DejaVu Sans Condensed Regular.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Condensed" "Regular"
KindleBlackboxRegular.ttf: "KindleBlackboxC" "Regular"
DejaVu Sans Mono Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Bold"
DejaVu Serif Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Bold"
DejaVu Sans Condensed Bold.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Condensed" "Bold"
DejaVu Serif Italic.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Italic"
DejaVu Sans Condensed Italic.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Condensed" "Italic"
DejaVu Serif Bold Italic.ttf: "DejaVu Serif" "Bold Italic"
DejaVu Sans Condensed Bold Italic.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Condensed" "Bold Italic"

[ixtab]

@yiming: I tried a bit more, and we are both correct

If the "condensed" font is *not* explicitly overridden using fonthack, it will indeed use the regular Caecilia font, instead of the condensed one (even if fc-match reports otherwise). I don't know why that is or how to fix it.

However, there is a simple workaround: explicitly assign "DejaVu Serif Condensed" as the condensed font. It looks better than Caecilia anyway

[ixtab]

(oops, double-post)

[Pink Floyd]

Hey,
Is it possible to put just 3 fonts in a folder? I don't have "Arial Bold Italic." But I have other regular, bold and italic of this font.
Tnx in advance.

[ixtab]

Short answer: no.

Long answer: no, but... you could cheat. For instance, you could copy the "Italic" .ttf to "Bold Italic" and then use this method on the 00-*.conf file.

The workflow would be something like:

1. Initialize font
2. check how Bold Italic style looks
3. Edit 00-*.conf
4. restart framework
5. goto 2

... until the result looks good.

[Antoinekamel]

Dear colleagues,

Here are two font families ready to the hack by ixtab: Bodoni MT and Antiqua. Both tested and I found readable and not problematic. Antiqua seems good generally, and Bodoni, at least on Kindle, a bit squared, which turned out to be good for little font size.