uLCD-70DT - External fonts anti-aliasing

[brian.logan]

Hi,

I notice when I use an external font (on uSD) generated with the strings widget and use print() to show dynamic text at runtime that the text appears to not be anti-aliased. However, if I use the same font on a statictext widget, it appears to be anti-aliased. Is there a way to anti-alias the print() text with the external font?

Is there a way to generate an external font without having to go through creating a strings widget as I don't need the strings, only the font, as I'm using print() to generate the text dynamically at runtime?

Thanks.

[ESPsupport]

The text in strings objects are not anti-aliased. This is so you can do various things to the text, change FB and BG colours,magnify, make transparent, etc. Static text is actually an image, so everything in it is 'fixed'.

When you create a strings object, you can ignore everything else except the font settings (i.e. you don't need to enter any text at all). Then you 'just' end up with a font.

[Anguel]

Hi,

I would be also very happy to see an option to anti-alias string fonts. These look really "ugly" besides the smooth and nice anti-aliased static texts. I am sure most users would prefer to have nice-looking anti-aliased text instead of the possibility to change colors, etc. I think the fact, that 4D can load smooth images directly from the SD card is a big plus in contrast to other systems and should be used wherever possible. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any other possibility to use anti-aliased characters like one can use these in custom digits. So please add the option to make a string anti-aliased!

Thanks in advanced for considering this proposal,

Anguel

[ESPsupport]

I don't think you would. To create anti-aliased text requires access to a double buffered screen.

So I don't think you'd like to pay the price for that.

[Anguel]

But why don't you just store the anti-aliased characters somehow as small images? That's what you do with custom digits.

[ESPsupport]

That only works when you know the background colour, which we do for custom digits, and static text

[Anguel]

I think presetting the background color is the smallest problem. Right now I have to work around by placing multiple buttons over each other wherever I can, instead of non-aliased strings. There is simply a very big difference in quality between aliased and non-aliased fonts that just look terrible and totally unprofessional.

UPDATE: The slow displaying of the currently implemented strings is another big problem.