m6_font_import tool

Asmo · 08-31-2007

Hi everyone! I have been using M6 Miniplayer for a year and got really tired of its ugly font. So, again a few days of reverse-engineering (well, "again" is not a suitable word, cause the last r-e was about a year ago, maybe someone remember m6_patch_font tool I've written

)

So, meet m6_font_import tool! It allows you to import glyphs from the fonts installed on your Windows system.

Dowload it here (mirror) (only for 2.004.x and higher versions of firmware)
Original fonts of M6 in txt format (download)

Usage:
m6_font_import.exe resource.bin font.txt out.bin [m3]

The last parameter is optional. Use it (without square brackets) if you want to import fonts
into resource file of Meizu M3 player. Do not specify this parameter
for Meizu M6 player.

Font description file (font.txt) MUST be in UTF-8 encoding!

Sample font.txt:
Tahoma <--- 16x16 font face
Tahoma <--- 20x20 font face (not used in M3 player)
Arial <--- 24x24 font face (not used in M3 player)
DEFAULT <--- Charset
700 <--- Weight of the 20x20 font (700 is default for bold, max = 1000)
900 <--- Weight of the 24x24 font (700 is default for bold, max = 1000)
(here add your own ranges, like sample ranges below)
0x0021 0x00ff <--- Range of characters to import (ASCII)
0x0400 0x04f0 <--- Range of characters to import (Cyrillic)

Valid charset identifiers:
ANSI
BALTIC
CHINESEBIG5
DEFAULT
EASTEUROPE
GB2312
GREEK
HANGUL
RUSSIAN
SHIFTJIS
TURKISH
VIETNAMESE
JOHAB
ARABIC
HEBREW
THAI

Used DEFAULT charset if you want to import characters of the current system locale. But for example if you want to import chinese when the system locale is English (United States) use GB2312 or CHINESEBIG5 (don't really sure).

Ranges are in hex format.
This sample font.txt configures tool to import english and cyrillic characters.
Rename out.bin to resource.bin and copy to player.

Hope you'll like your Meizu with new fonts even more!

P.S.
Give me the source of the firmware... Don't like to spend much time on reverse-engineering

DChronos · 08-31-2007

When the heck did this come out?? It would kick ass to make themes with new fonts! The Skin page I'm doing should have plenty of interesting new skins now. I don't have a working M6 to try this, but could someone try this out and post some actual pics of new fonts installed to the M6?

Are the fonts limited by characters usable, and the width and height? Also, how stable is this? If you import a font to the M6, it isn't gonna mess anything up, is it?

Also, there is no source for the firmware as Meizu is not releasing it. Everyone wants them to, and it would help not only Meizu but the whole miniplayer line as well, but they still aren't. You can read more here as someone made a thread for that:
A modest proposal for Meizu: open source the firmware!

Also, if it helps any, this thread I made is for getting a good look at the chips, circuitry, and other parts involved in the M6 design. Might give you an idea of what does what:
Requesting pictures inside M6 SP 4GB

Asmo · 08-31-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by DChronos

When the heck did this come out?? It would kick ass to make themes with new fonts! The Skin page I'm doing should have plenty of interesting new skins now. I don't have a working M6 to try this, but could someone try this out and post some actual pics of new fonts installed to the M6?

Are the fonts limited by characters usable, and the width and height? Also, how stable is this? If you import a font to the M6, it isn't gonna mess anything up, is it?

Tool uses fonts installed on your system, width and height is not modifiable. If some characters don't exist in font they will be replaced with rectangles. Player uses 16x16 and 20x20 glyphs. So just specify font face and weight for the bold (20x20) font and tool will calculate necessary sizes itself.
Well, as for stability... Now my M6 works perfect, hope there won't be any surprises like some during development

Quote:

Originally Posted by DChronos

Also, there is no source for the firmware as Meizu is not releasing it. Everyone wants them to, and it would help not only Meizu but the whole miniplayer line as well, but they still aren't. You can read more here as someone made a thread for that:
A modest proposal for Meizu: open source the firmware!

Also, if it helps any, this thread I made is for getting a good look at the chips, circuitry, and other parts involved in the M6 design. Might give you an idea of what does what:
Requesting pictures inside M6 SP 4GB

Thanks!

tERROR · 08-31-2007

thanks for sharing this information...

DChronos · 08-31-2007

Hey, you know what you need now? An M6 font CREATION tool for people to create their own 16x16 and 20x20 fonts with via a simple black and white pixel drawing program. You could make it have a large view for drawing on with a black grid (white tile squares) showing each pixel of the character you're creating, and a small view that shows what it will look like beside the large one. When you draw, you draw in black. Also, set it up so that you know what character you are drawing for, like at the top, it could say "Glyph for letter 'a'", so you know when you save the font, the glyph you drew is for that letter.

Also, the button assignments for the program would be easy: left click to draw black, right click to erase the black, and then an undo function. Also, the ability to import a font and view it in the size the same way your program does it would be awesome, so people could import a font and then make adjustments to each glyph if needed, or if they just want to.

People with an image editor that does text could also type their font and then shrink it and choose for themselves the best pixels to keep and which to toss out for transparent pixels.

How does that sound?

Also, I had edited my post while you were replying and asked: "Also, how stable is this? If you import a font to the M6, it isn't gonna mess anything up, is it?"

One last question I'd like to ask about is, how come the fonts, what I remember, looked like rectangular shapes, taller than they were wide? I thought they were like that, because something the same width and height would look either fat as a font, or spaced out too far... especially with characters like i and a period or other mark. Does the M6 overlap characters placing a set amount of empty space between the actual edge pixels of the font's characters or something?

Asmo · 08-31-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by DChronos

Hey, you know what you need now? An M6 font CREATION tool for people to create their own 16x16 and 20x20 fonts with via a simple black and white pixel drawing program.

Well, if I find some free time again than maybe I'll start developing...

Quote:

Originally Posted by DChronos

One last question I'd like to ask about is, how come the fonts, what I remember, looked like rectangular shapes, taller than they were wide? I thought they were like that, because something the same width and height would look either fat as a font, or spaced out too far... especially with characters like i and a period or other mark. Does the M6 overlap characters placing a set amount of empty space between the actual edge pixels of the font's characters or something?

M6 keeps width for each glyph and the glyph itself is left aligned in the 16x16 or 20x20 matrix.

tERROR · 08-31-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by DChronos

Hey, you know what you need now? An M6 font CREATION tool for people to create their own 16x16 and 20x20 fonts with via a simple black and white pixel drawing program. You could make it have a large view for drawing on with a black grid (white tile squares) showing each pixel of the character you're creating, and a small view that shows what it will look like beside the large one. When you draw, you draw in black. Also, set it up so that you know what character you are drawing for, like at the top, it could say "Glyph for letter 'a'", so you know when you save the font, the glyph you drew is for that letter.

Also, the button assignments for the program would be easy: left click to draw black, right click to erase the black, and then an undo function. Also, the ability to import a font and view it in the size the same way your program does it would be awesome, so people could import a font and then make adjustments to each glyph if needed, or if they just want to.

i'd like to oppose to this idea - i don't want to sound rude, but from my point of view creating a tool to draw 20x20 pixel big letters is a total waste of time.
typology is a very sensitive area, and you can't expect anyone that know's nothing about this to come up with a good font. additionally there are plenty of good fonts out there, that where made by ppl that really know what they are doing.

if you agree with me, that the available fonts will be supperior to those created without a masterplan by clicking on some squares, than you'll also have to see, that changing a font that doesn't quite match the meizus 16x16/20x20 in a graphic programm (PSD, Gimp) will be much easier than trying to recreate it by rather ancient technology.

btw: there is already a tool coming with windows, that allows to create fonts in the "square-clicking" manner you described - it's called paint :D

ps: if you don't believe me - just try to create a simple font from scratch

pps: i am not a native speaker - if something i wrote turned out a litte bit too strong, i hope you accept my pardon for this. i am not trying to offend anyone

iversonjack · 09-01-2007

Cool thing this is, anyone could perhaps make a skin with new font for all to try and see? I would die for new font...

DChronos · 09-01-2007

tERROR, I don't think someone that has little to no interest in creating a font by hand would have interest in trying to use, let alone use the font they make with it. The font sizes are very small, so creating your own font is easy. You can't make a font in paint and then send the images into the M6... unless you have a tool to make fonts with from images. This tool only takes fonts you get that OTHER people have made and put them on, but I can guarantee that converting a font from one size to another of such a small size is going to make all the glyphs work. In fact, it won't. They will need some adjusting, so a creation to to view and edit the glyphs is a GOOD idea.

Now for those that actually have the interest to create a font only they themselves are gonna use anyway, more than likely, or those that are actually good at graphics design (me, for one), we would probably be very interested in making new M6 type fonts. I sure as hell would, and the best way to make a font of this size specifically for this device is to make one. Impoting is a great idea, but some fonts won't work too well with it, only basic fonts like arial that are clear and precise would work very well, as far as I can tell from dealing with small fonts.

I have one font style I would love to make, since it doesn't exist outside color images, and that's the Megaman X font. It's a font of that size, and is even a block style font that has a set width and height. There are tons of game fonts like that, too, that are small, and they would need to be made by a font creation tool that can make actual glyphs and save them as a FONT, not a picture, which I already got.

Anyway, for such small sizes, I think many people could get into messing with it, and if anything, if Asmo has a file with the default font for the M6 to load back up... well, I guess just reloading the resource would do that... then there isn't anything you can hurt by messing with a font template and changing some thing by hand to look the way YOU want them to.

Someone, please get a screenshot of a new font that's easy to see it's completely different, and thanks in advance!

Also, seriously... anything someone that would like to take on the task of making that edits to look and style of the graphics would kick ass. Maybe soon, we'll be able to adjust the sizes of some things to fix some things... such as the difference in height between characters in the browser and main menu which messes up selection bars, and the palcement of them.

I'm really waiting for the day someone finally cracks the M6.EBN file and finds out how to add their own new stuff. If people that could do that were here and had the passion XBOX 360 crackers have, then it would be done in a week. I just read read about a device some people have built that can read off the hard drive and flash teh firmware in the dvd drive in them.

Lexridge · 09-01-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by tERROR

i'd like to oppose to this idea - i don't want to sound rude, but from my point of view creating a tool to draw 20x20 pixel big letters is a total waste of time.
typology is a very sensitive area, and you can't expect anyone that know's nothing about this to come up with a good font. additionally there are plenty of good fonts out there, that where made by ppl that really know what they are doing.

if you agree with me, that the available fonts will be supperior to those created without a masterplan by clicking on some squares, than you'll also have to see, that changing a font that doesn't quite match the meizus 16x16/20x20 in a graphic programm (PSD, Gimp) will be much easier than trying to recreate it by rather ancient technology.

btw: there is already a tool coming with windows, that allows to create fonts in the "square-clicking" manner you described - it's called paint :D

ps: if you don't believe me - just try to create a simple font from scratch

Anyone good at calligraphy could easily do it. I once created some fonts for a promotional campaign for a television station. They wanted a particular font loaded into the Chyron, which in 1983, the choice of fonts was limited to about 9. I purchased a set of dry transfers about 1 inch tall, and digitized (1 bit mode) each one of them from a broadcast quality video camera, and cleaned up each character by hand. It was quite an intensive project, and having never done it before, it worked beautifully! Oh, and I was a senior in high school when I did this.

So, I surmise that ANYONE, while paying careful attention to detail, can create a font. It certainly is NOT rocket science.