Use existing Chinese or Japanese characters bdf file and remove unwanted characters to reduce the font data size

[AnthonyThet]

Hi, I am currently working on project which uses 128x32 SSD1312 OLED display and I need to display UI menus in three different languages, English, Chinese and Japanese. Since I only need a few limited number of characters as I need to display only some user modes (words in different languages but the numbers will still be used English characters) and these wordings will also be fixed, is there a way to use the existing Chinese or Japanese font bdf files and remove unnesscessary characters. Then convert this into .c file to reduce the font data size much more. Or should I just use a fixed bitmap full-screen buffer image for each menu for these languages? Apology for the dumb question as I don't understand much about how this font mapping is working and I'm still learning 😅🙏. Thanks so much in advance and your suggestion will be much appreciated...

[AnthonyThet]

Hi, I just realized one thing that I actually need the fonts data since I am going to use the muimanual menu. So I got only one option and that is to create a custom fonts data (remove unwanted character from existing bdf files and create a new font data). How should I do this? 😊🙏

[olikraus]

There are several options.

• Update the bdf file with a text editor
• Use a bdf font editor like fontforge or gbdfed
• There might be also some online tools available
  Moreover there are several youtube videos, which cover this topic.

[olikraus]

I suggest to create your own custom font, with the u8g2 bdfconv font tool. To use that tool you need the font sources.
I personally suggest to use .bdf as a font source, they are available here: https://github.com/olikraus/u8g2/tree/master/tools/font/bdf

More information on the conversion is available here:

u8g2/doc/faq.txt

Lines 255 to 288 in dc9fc73

	Q: How can I generate my own font?
	A: The font must be available in .bdf file format. Then use bdfconv to generate
	the font data. The font data can be pasted into an existing file of your project.
	There is also a nice Windows Bitmap Font Editor "Fony" (http://hukka.ncn.fi/?fony)
	which can export .bdf files. A copy of Fony 1.4.7 is available here:
	https://github.com/olikraus/u8g2/tree/master/tools/font/fony
	Q: Where do I find bdfconv?
	A: A Windows executable is available here:
	https://github.com/olikraus/u8g2/tree/master/tools/font/bdfconv
	Use the Makefile in this directory to create a Linux binary.
	Q: How to convert .ttf to .bdf?
	A1: With otf2bdf: http://sofia.nmsu.edu/~mleisher/Software/otf2bdf/
	A2: With FontForge: https://learn.adafruit.com/custom-fonts-for-pyportal-circuitpython-display/conversion
	Q: Which commandline options are required for bdfconv?
	A: "bdfconv -f 1 -m '32-255' -n fontname -o myfont.c myfont.bdf"
	"-f 1" generates a u8g2 font.
	"-m '32-255'" selects unicode 32 to 255. On Windows, please use double quotes: -m "32-255"
	"-n fontname": This is the name of the font in C/C++/Ino files.
	"-o myfont.c": The font array will be stored in this file.
	"myfont.bdf": The input file with the font data (bdf format).
	Q: Is there any further help for the commandline options of bdfconv.exe?
	A: There is an online tool which helps you to derive the commandline options:
	https://stncrn.github.io/u8g2-unifont-helper/
	Many thanks to "stncrn" for making this available.
	Q: Are there any video-tutorials for bdfconv?
	A1: This is what I found on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igkb7ZmO31A
	The above video uses the -M option (instead of -m) to provide a map file with the unicodes.
	A2: There is a video about fony and how to convert fonts from different sources (ttf, png) with bdfconv.exe:
	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIAcy5FXuAA

[AnthonyThet]

Thanks alot @olikraus for your support to every single query about this project. I will try this method according the youtube video tutorial in your faq.txt. Once again, thanks a lot for your great support... 🙏🙏🙏