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MinimalFonts - Minimal Fonts modules with a single font embedded to save space and avoid filesystem access

Description

It bugged me several times that to successfully boot an Oberon system, it is required to load a font file from the filesystem. Having a System.Tool is optional and the boot modules can also be loaded from serial line, but without a font file, you won't be able to read anything or interact with the system. In most cases, having a single font, Oberon10.Scn.Fnt is sufficient for using the system.

Therefore, you can find here two implementations of a minimal Fonts module which embed their fonts.

The first one embeds the original Oberon10.Scn.Fnt patterns (for TAB as well as characters 32-126), therefore providing the same user experience as the default, as long as only valid ASCII characters and only this one font is used.

The second one embeds an ugly, generated font, which is a lot smaller, and might be useful in scenarios where you want to boot a system with very constrained memory (In the generated font, lowercase letters look like uppercase letters shifted down by one pixel, but compared to the file size, the font is surprisingly easy to read). This font uses only 16 bits for each glyph; 15 of them provide a 3x5 matrix, and the remaining one is used to shift the glyph down by one pixel.

Both modules only support one font, so regardless which font is requested, it will always return the same font. Both modules do not change the symbol file, so you can easily update the fonts module without having to recompile any dependent modules.

Also, a FontsDumper utility module is provided which can be used to dump the patterns of a font to System.Log, so you can copy them from there into the first module (if you want to use a different default font).

File sizes

  • Original Fonts.rsc: 2649 bytes

  • Oberon10.Scn.Fnt: 2284 bytes

  • Both of these files: 4933 bytes

  • Embedded Fonts.rsc: 2229 bytes

  • Minimal Fonts.rsc: 1289 bytes

Installation

  • Push Fonts.Embedded.Mod or Fonts.Minimal.Mod to your Oberon system.

    ORP.Compile Fonts.Embedded.Mod ~
ORP.Compile Fonts.Minimal.Mod ~

  • Restart your system