Font Types

Overview

Depending upon the display type, there may be the option to use either Bitmap fonts or Vector fonts.

Bitmap Fonts

All display module types support bitmap fonts. When the setup is programmed into the display, fonts are converted to monochrome bitmap images with a sub-image for each character.

If multiple sizes of the same font are used then each size will require a separate bitmap generated for it. It is therefore worth limiting the set of font sizes used, where possible to reduce memory usage.

By default, the Windows-1252 code page will be used for mapping characters, sometimes referred to as a charset. Some display setups may use characters that are not representable by the default code page. In these instances Dash Design will generate a custom code page so that these characters may be rendered by the display.

Vector Fonts

Some display types support ‘vector’ fonts (e.g. TTF).

Vector fonts have the following advantages:

• Anti-aliased rendering.
• The same font data can be used to render different font sizes.
• Unicode support.

Since vector fonts allow the display to support unicode, gauges like Label Gauge or Text Input Gauge that are using vector fonts will be encoded with a unicode representation (UTF-8).

When using unicode characters in Notifications (see Notifications Tab ), it is best to ensure that gauges that use them are either exclusively vector fonts or bitmap fonts to avoid potential rendering issues since different charsets are expected.