Files

TXT is a file format that contains the text, organized in rows. Text files opposed binaries that contain data that is not intended for interpretation as a text (encoded sound or image). The text file can contain both formatted and unformatted text. Since the very simple text. Download this app from Microsoft Store for Windows 10. See screenshots, read the latest customer reviews, and compare ratings for Microsoft Font Maker. Font Converter is a Windows program which allows convenient converting of any PC installed font into an emWin (bitmap) font that can be easily integrated into emWin based applications. It automatically displays the Font generation options dialog box and it allows you to select the output font. BitFonter is a professional bitmap font editor for Windows (with limited capabilities to run on macOS up to 10.14 Mojave as well, not on 10.15 Catalina). With BitFonter, you can create and edit bitmap fonts for print publications, web pages, animations, computer games and electronic devices. Gbdfed lets you interactively create new bitmap font files or modify existing ones. It allows editing multiple fonts and multiple glyphs, it allows cut and paste operations between fonts and glyphs and editing font properties. The editor works natively with BDF fonts.

• fonts.zip245 KiB

After my blog post on e-ink displays, I wanted to go into more detail on how I generated the bitmap fonts I used. In this blog post, I'll show how to generate bitmap fonts from fonts you can get online, and a brief intro on how to use them.

I know there are a few tools out there for generating this kind of thing, but this was a custom thing for my microcontroller and I like doing and learning things myself!

Bitmap Fonts

There are quite a few sites with freely downloadable fonts that make great pixel fonts (FontGal.com is one), although .ttf files can't really be used on microcontrollers, so we first need to rasterize them to a bitmap font. To conserve space, each character is 6x8 pixels in size (WxH), and only common ASCII characters are drawn.

C Header

Before we can use this in a microcontroller, we need to turn the bitmap font into a C header file, so it can be compiled into the firmware. Since the bitmap font is black and white, the most efficient way to store it is an array of 6 bytes, with each byte representing one vertical column of pixels (8 pixels high). The resulting header file looks something like this:

This is a fairly standard way of representing fonts, though it does pose a limitation in that characters can only be 8 pixels high, and it makes it somewhat difficult to represent variable-width characters (since each char must have exactly 6 bytes)

For example, the character 'A':

Drawing Fonts

It's fairly easy to draw fonts stored like this. First we convert the ASCII character to an index by subtracting the offset of the first character in the font. This works because the characters in the font are defined in numerical order ('0'=48, 'A'=65, etc.), so subtracting the space character (' '=32) returns the index in the array. We also replace any invalid characters with space, to prevent the code from trying to draw characters that aren't defined!

This can easily be used to draw a C-string:

It is possible to extend this code to support variable-width characters, or dynamically selectable fonts (using pointers), but that's a bit trickier to implement.

Downloads

An archive of my processed fonts is available here: fonts.zip

This includes the processing script, rasterized .png files, and the source .ttf files.

As always, if you want to know more or need some help, feel free to contact me or leave a comment!

Pixel fonts, also known as screen fonts or bitmap fonts, are fonts consisting of small pixels. Pixel fonts display the texts in simple blocks instead of elaborate curves as most regular fonts do. So the obvious advantage of pixel fonts over regular fonts is that texts using pixel fonts can still look crisp and clear in very small sizes. Pixel fonts are very popular over the Internet due to its clearness and crisp look, especially in websites that require text legibility in small sizes such as flash websites.

Because pixel fonts are usually designed to fit pixel by pixel with the computer screen, it will be best displayed at a specified size. Thyme Nu created by Michel Troy is a typical font family of pixel style. The family contains six fonts, and they are perfect for both small screen resolutions and outputs at larger sizes.

Thyme Nu by Michel Troy

To download free pixel fonts, you can take a look at our collection of pixel fonts. If you are looking for professional pixel fonts with good kerning, alternates, broad character support, have a look at pixel fonts at MyFonts.com. If you don’t want the hassle of downloading and installing fonts, but just want to use pixel fonts fonts online, you should check our text generator tool below.

Bitmap Font Creator

Create text images with pixel fonts

You can use the following tool to generate text images based on your selection of colors, text effects and sizes using pixel fonts in seconds. You can then save the image, or use the EMBED button to get image links. If you want to modify the image further such as rotating, bending or blurring, you can use our image tools.

Windows Bitmap Font

Bitmap Font Tool