kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Lorenzo" <lomarcan@...>]

--- In kicad-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "vladimir_uryvaev" <vovanius@...> wrote:
>
> Is someone currently working on kicad font(s)?
> From where current font was taken?
> What are licence on this font?
> What tools used to process it?

The current font is a direct conversion of the Simplex Hershey font (I converted it). Its free to use, there should be the licence in the .h containing it. The one before it (the 'squared one') I don't know...

I've built an ISO font (Latin 1 + Cyrillic + Technical Set 1) converting an.shp font found on the net.

I didn't submit it because:
1) The license status is unknown (it was something like super iso8 or something...)
2) Metrics are COMPLETELY different (since the current font is 'squared' while the iso one is approx. 1:2). This is actually the main reason for the conversion :P

I also handle the Technical Set 1 extension to access technical greek and the IEC symbols (like AC, DC, 3state and so on)

> I have experience on designing stroke (plotter) fonts, so I can make international (at least supporting all european languages) font for KiCad.

If you want I've built a tool which reads a .shp definition and outputs thehersey strings semiautomatically (i.e. metrics are built into the code as constant, and it's very rough :D). It supports most of the shp constructs like subshapes, but not the vertical movement bypass token. So if you want to design a font using an shp editor (i.e. autocad with some lisp tool) thistool can be of some help, maybe after some refining... if you want it I'llpost the source on the group.

Of course the most important thing is designing on the right integer grid, since hershey encoding only supports integer coordinates; to be exact IIRC it supports coordinates between -50 and +50. The scaling offsets and factors are built into the font drawing routine since for now the font isn't replaceable...