More Fonts

Are you looking to display new fonts on your PyPortal? You can use just about any font on your computer or downloaded from the internet. This guide will walk you through generating bitmap fonts using the FontForge open-source project.

Why Bitmaps?

PyPortal uses the CircuitPython Bitmap Font Library to render "live" text on the display. A bitmap font stores each character as an array of pixels. Bitmap fonts are simply groups of images. For each variant of the font, there is a complete set of images, with each set containing an image for each character.

Computers, on the other hand, use variable size 'TrueType' or 'Postscript' fonts, where there's a mathematical algorithm that defines each character, so it can be drawn at any size.

Font Forging

This is where FontForge comes into play. FontForge is an open-source font editor for Windows, Mac OS and GNU+Linux. It features tools for converting existing fonts into different font formats.

Where Do I Get Fonts?

Here's a list of some neat places to obtain some fresh fonts.

• The Inter typeface family
• Font Squirrel
• Google Fonts
• Adobe Fonts
• DaFont
• Font Library