Font Framework

Font Framework

Fonts can be overridden by module or language either manually by each user or centrally for all users.

Reason for Font Framework

There have been lots of e-mails regarding font problems during the past year and I have made a start with an attempt to address some of those problems.

The main issues that have been raised are:

1. Greek breathing marks are not displayed.
2. Hebrew vowels not displayed because they prevent correct rtl display.
3. Certain language fonts are not available on Android
4. Certain language character shaping and rtl are not correct - related to 2.

Manual Override

Experienced Sword users can associate a font with a module or language using sdcard/jsword/fonts folder.

1. Create this folder on your Android mobile: mnt/sdcard/jsword/fonts
2. Create fonts.properties containing mappings like 'SBLGNT=GalSILR.ttf' or 'fr=myFrenchFont.ttf' and copy the file to the above folder
3. Copy any referenced font (ttf) files to the same folder
4. Restart And Bible and test the font
5. To adjust the font size you may also add settings like 'myFrenchFont.ttf=2' to increase the font size by 2.

Central Font Override

This will hopefully address 1 and begin to address 3 for non complex languages.

1. Store fonts on a server.
2. Associate fonts with a module or language.
3. When a module is downloaded check the font association list and download a font if required.
4. When displaying a page add the css to the header to load any required font

The above will hopefully provide the correct display of modules with no user intervention. Experienced users will be able to change font using the jsword/fonts folder.

Currently only the SBLGNT font is overridden.

Shaping

It has been suggested that And Bible includes Graphite integration to display rtl and complex languages and I hope to look into this and try it out. Any comments from current users would be appreciated.

Graphite still requires fonts to be distributed so this would build on the initial font distribution framework.

The Android implementation of Graphite seems to be being refined.

Greek Font Tests

I have been testing various Greek fonts with the SBLGNT module.

Font	Test result
GentiumPlus-R.ttf	squares due to missing chars in SBLGNT
SBL_grk.ttf	looks perfect to me
LinLibertine_R.otf	squares due to missing chars in SBLGNT
LinBiolinum_R.otf	squares due to missing chars in SBLGNT
GalSILR.ttf	looks good, possible missing char in Matt 1:6, etc
GalSILR-webfont.woff	woff doesn't seem to work - I think it is just Android 3.0+ but see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3200069/css-fonts-on-android for fall back technique