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DGB

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 8:07 pm

Frequent contributor Joined: 24 Jun 2005 Posts: 453

EPGnavigator v5.0 beta1 is available.

The release introduces support for the fonts package by Pavel Kopylov (a slight digression I know). This is a beta release and is not intended for every day use. Besides the odd bug, the new font code is completely unoptimised. Even so, the performance is acceptable.

If anyone cares to try this release then I would be interested in the following.

1) Best font

Which font looks best. The supplied fonts are Arial Bold rasterised with heights of 17, 18 and 22, for small, medium and large. This is adequate but not great.

Fonts are displayed correctly in 4:3 and are stretched in 16:9. Is there a font that looks better in 16:9.

Some fonts are free to use and others are owned and licensed. So presumably a free font is required.

2) Anti aliasing

The fonts are anti aliased. Does this work on CRT TVs.

3) European language support

The supplied fonts are compiled with the ISO8859-1.txt character map. Is this the correct map for countries other than the UK.

4) Program bugs

There are bound to be some problems in the way EPGnavigator handles the new fonts.

5) Are the new fonts an improvement.

There is a thread on the font package in the TAP developers forum. The font rasteriser program is run like this.

rasterizer <input-font-file-name> iso8859-1.txt <height> <output-font-file-name>

EPGnavigator can be downloaded from http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/epgnavigator

Dave

Last edited by DGB on Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:03 pm; edited 5 times in total

jumbo

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 8:45 pm

Frequent contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 4731

Yo dude the new fonts rock on my 32" Plasma Razz

Fonts, fonts and more fonts please preferrably larger ones. Thanks for the continued effort.

Last edited by jumbo on Tue Aug 07, 2007 1:15 pm; edited 3 times in total

alan_m

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 10:41 pm

Frequent contributor Joined: 17 Oct 2006 Posts: 3543

DGB wrote:

EPGnavigator v5.0 beta1 is available.

5) Are the new fonts an improvement.

Dave

How does one select a font? I have the 3 fonts and the TAP in Auto Start and the use external fonts option set to Yes. The default font is still used (as per previous versions of the TAP) and there doesn't appear to be a way of selecting anything else.

_________________
Ex Toppy 5800 user - now migrated to Xtrend ET10000 Enigma 2 box with 2 terrestrial and 2 satellite tuners. Second box Zgemma H9S (Enigma 2, satellite)

jumbo

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 2:26 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 4731

DGB you are a star! May other TAPs follow your brave lead (with thanks to Pavel Kopylov et al for the pioneering work).
I had a good play with different fonts and they all looked fun and interesting! Through trial-and-error I figured which bits of EPGN used which fonts as I changed the size.

For slow coaches like me here's a summary (I hope I've got it right):

EPGN uses three different sized fonts: small, medium and large - all of them,
On the Toppy, font files which EPGN uses must be called EPGnavigator_small_font.fnt, EPGnavigator_medium_font.fnt and EPGnavigator_large_font.fnt according to the font size used to generate them (note miXeD case spelling and extension),
On the Toppy, font files must reside in the same folder/directory as the TAP.

To generate the Toppy font (.fnt) files for EPG Navigator:

Grab a windows font file such as Trebuchet MS Bold by copying/pasting Start->Settings->Control Panel->Fonts->trebucbd to the folder containing "rasterizer.exe" DOS executable file that came in the EPGN zip file. (You can open the windows .ttf font file to see how the characters look)
Open a DOS window and go to the directory containing "rasterizer.exe" and type:

Code:
rasterizer trebucbd.ttf iso8859-1.txt 18 EPGnavigator_small_font.fnt <return>
rasterizer trebucbd.ttf iso8859-1.txt 20 EPGnavigator_medium_font.fnt <return>
rasterizer trebucbd.ttf iso8859-1.txt 22 EPGnavigator_large_font.fnt <return>
Use Altair/ftp/... to copy the generated font files (.fnt) to the same folder/directory as the new EPGnavigatorEN TAP
Make sure you set, in the EPGN Options Menu, "Use External Fonts" to "Yes".
Admire!

Fingers crossed no crash yet Razz

Last edited by jumbo on Sat Aug 04, 2007 11:26 pm; edited 2 times in total

DGB

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 7:51 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 24 Jun 2005 Posts: 453

Spot on Jumbo.

There are lots of TrueType fonts in Windows and on the Web. If you do download fonts do not install them on your PC, just load them into a work area. A small utility like Font Xplorer helps you browse the fonts in any selected folder.

Dave

alan_m

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 8:50 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 17 Oct 2006 Posts: 3543

jumbo wrote:

For slow coaches like me here's a summary (I hope I've got it right):

rasterizer trebucbd iso8859-1.txt 18 EPGnavigator_small_font.fnt <return>

You may/will need the file extension in the font name (.ttf)

rasterizer trebucbd.ttf iso8859-1.txt 18 EPGnavigator_small_font.fnt <return>

_________________
Ex Toppy 5800 user - now migrated to Xtrend ET10000 Enigma 2 box with 2 terrestrial and 2 satellite tuners. Second box Zgemma H9S (Enigma 2, satellite)

alan_m

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 9:17 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 17 Oct 2006 Posts: 3543

DGB wrote:

EPGnavigator v5.0 beta1 is available.

The fonts are anti aliased. Does this work on CRT TVs.

Any font with narrow horizontal lines flickers (as expected) on a CRT. Your initial choice of Arial Bold works well. The probem can be seen on a CRT when something like Times Roman, or even Times Roman Bold is used.

_________________
Ex Toppy 5800 user - now migrated to Xtrend ET10000 Enigma 2 box with 2 terrestrial and 2 satellite tuners. Second box Zgemma H9S (Enigma 2, satellite)

chunkywizard

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 9:20 am

MyStuff Team Joined: 13 May 2005 Posts: 9319 Location: Sindlesham, Berkshire Tx: Hannington

Any chance of a before and after screendump so we can see how good it looks?

TIA

CW

DGB

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 9:24 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 24 Jun 2005 Posts: 453

alan_m wrote:

DGB wrote:

EPGnavigator v5.0 beta1 is available.

The fonts are anti aliased. Does this work on CRT TVs.

Given the poor screen resolution I would expect that any serif font like Times will be too fussy and that sans serif fonts will work better.

Dave

jumbo

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 10:46 am

Frequent contributor Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 4731

chunkywizard wrote:

Any chance of a before and after screendump so we can see how good it looks?
CW

Seeing is believing, why not try it for yourself and see Shocked

Zip file contains everything. It's just like the ones posted in the TAP Development section - but better Wink

@DGB: Are you planning to make the "grid" size change with the font size so that, for example, we can fit larger fonts with less info? I'd particularly like a choice of larger font size for Radio Times extended info. The 16:9 squashiness could be addressed by the use of TAPCOM/WSSKiller a la German TAPs. I think if UKAS went the same route it would be a neat solution to inter-TAP communication. At last we free from the shackles of mediocre fonts!

chunkywizard

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 11:26 am

MyStuff Team Joined: 13 May 2005 Posts: 9319 Location: Sindlesham, Berkshire Tx: Hannington

Ok loaded and tried and I must say they look really good. I think a lot of playing need to be done to fine a font that looks as good in 16:9 as it does in 4:3. IMO the supplied font looks much better at 4:3 but then again it's better than the standard Toppy font in both modes. I'll post some screenies when I get a mo.

CW

chunkywizard

Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 11:35 am

MyStuff Team Joined: 13 May 2005 Posts: 9319 Location: Sindlesham, Berkshire Tx: Hannington

chunkywizard wrote:

Any chance of a before and after screendump so we can see how good it looks?

TIA

CW

See below, for before and after shots in 4:3 and 16:9

Kurev

Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2007 7:53 pm

Joined: 11 Aug 2006 Posts: 4 Location: Finland

I have 28" crt, and new fonts look very nice on it. Excellent improvement. I haven't been able to try out other fonts than those provided with TAP, because rasterize.exe crashes every time on my Windows Vista.

I have one issue though, when I enable external fonts, many channels and programs get this square character/symbol in front of their names. I could try taking screenshots if that would help.

I have 5100 MP, and reside in Finland.

matt

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 3:03 pm

Forum moderator Joined: 30 Mar 2005 Posts: 2305 Location: St Ives, Cornwall Transmitter: Redruth

I'll be trying Helvetica Neue.

matt

_________________
PVR: TF5800, MyStuff recommended firmware, new PSU, 250GB Spinpoint HDD, Zalman ZM-OP1 fan TAPs: QuickJump 1.72, MyStuff 6.4, EPG2MEI 0.96, Extend 1.7, Bookmark 3, UK Auto Scheduler 0.73, SecCache 0.4, EIT Sub 0.6, SDS 1.3, TAP Commander 1.34, Font Manager 1.0d. Others: HDFW 2.3a, Channel Manager 5.1, FastScanGUI, MyInfo TV: Philips 37PFL9603D

alan_m

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2007 3:21 pm

Frequent contributor Joined: 17 Oct 2006 Posts: 3543

matt wrote:

Where do I download the rasterizer?
The Berlios site has me confused.

I'll be trying Helvetica Neue Bold.

matt

It's in the zip file that comes with EPGNavigator beta5

_________________
Ex Toppy 5800 user - now migrated to Xtrend ET10000 Enigma 2 box with 2 terrestrial and 2 satellite tuners. Second box Zgemma H9S (Enigma 2, satellite)

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