Fonts - Bitmap Fonts
On your embedded system, you will want the font to be stored as an array of bitmaps.
However the source of those bitmaps is likely to be a font in a format found on the desktop.
One of the most suitable formats is the BDF format.
Notes:
So now that we know what we want from a font, where do we get one. We want the font to be stored as a set of C structures that can be compiled into our program. Ideally we want to convert a font from the desktop into a set of C structures. As discussed earlier most modern desktop formats are scaled fonts, and converting them to a set of simple arrays would be a difficult task. However the Bitmap Distribution Format, or BDF, while no longer widely used on the desktop is ideal for our purposes. There are still a large number of BDF fonts available for free on the Internet, including JIS fonts for Japanese and Unicode fonts to cover every other language you are likely to need.
There is a conversion program available on my web site which will convert from BDF format to a set of C structures. Before we look at the output of that program, let’s look at the BDF format itself...