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AdafruitGFXFontTool


A custom font creator for microcontrollers using the Adafruit GFX font format

Running project example

How to install or build, and run the project

Runtime requirements:

Build requirements:

Downloading and running the project

  • Download pre-built and ready to run project at AdafruitGFXFontTool-Releases
  • Unzip Release.zip
  • Open Release folder and run AdafruitGFXFont.exe

Building and running the project

  • Download and extract the source code folder
  • Open AdafruitGFXFont/AdafruitGFXFont.csproj in Visual Studio 2022
  • In Visual Studio, select Build->Build Solution
  • Project will be built at AdafruitGFXFont\bin\Debug or AdafruitGFXFont\bin\Release (Debug by defualt)
  • Generated executable will be called AdafruitGFXFont.exe

Using the project

Initial project screen
You have two options when getting started with the project. Either Creating your own custom font with Set Font Settings or importing a font with Import Font

When importing a custom font, all font properties: character range, name and height, will automatically be imported aswell

Initializing a font
When creating a new font, you will need to choose these variables on your own

  • The font name can be any valid variable name in C/C++ Rules for Naming Variable
  • Font height needs to be a number (0-255) as uint8_t. Note: font height is only used to determine new line distance (aka. yAdvance)
  • Range minimum and maximum determines the range of UTF-8 characters to be included in the font. Range can be input as either a number (0-65535) or hex number (0x00-0xfFF) as uint16_t.
  • When all variables are entered as desired, press Submit

Creating and modifying characters
Under the "Choose Char" label is a dropdown menu with all available characters in font range, listed as (int / hex = char) format. Pick one to get started.

After choosing a character, you can change the properties for the character:

  • Width: The width (x coordinate size) of your character - a number (0-255) as uint8_t
  • Height: The height (y coordinate size) of your character - a number (0-255) as uint8_t
  • xAdvance: The amount of pixels to move the cursor (x coordinate) after drawing the character - a number (0-255) as uint8_t
  • xOffset: The amount of movement applied to the cursor (x coordinate) before drawing character (does not affect cursor after drawing) - a number (-128-127) as int8_t
  • yOffset: The amount of movement applied to the cursor (u coordinate) before drawing character (does not affect cursor after drawing) - a number (-128-127) as int8_t After choosing the desired variables, click Apply new char options

When applying new character properties, the previously drawn character will be wiped, this leaves an array of white squares at the rightmost point of the screen.
Click the squares to get started painting! when clicked, the squares will toggle from white to black, where black is the pixels which will be drawn
Note: The squares are built from an array of C# PictureBox elements, which are highly inefficient for this task, but easy to debug and develop. This means there will be a delay for how fast you can click the same square multiple times

When you are done painting the desired characters, click Build Font and choose a folder
This will output a single file under the folder Called "{fontname}GFXFONT.h"
When this header file is imported into a project, the GFXfont element can be referred to as the font name set at the start

Resources