Looking for complete VHDL ROM SAMPLE FONTS

[niala72]

Hello,

I am in France near Le Mans, so excuse me if I make english errors.

I am designing a sort of VGA display with ALTERA QUARTUS II v13 web edition and a CYCLONE IV device. Instead of filling manually all the source text with different sizes (simply doubling tripling or quadrupling horizontally and vertically each pixel would be easy bot not very nice to see) I would be happy to find such files only for Ascii characters.

Can anyone tell me where I could find that ?

Thank you very much.

 

[TrickyDicky]

What are you talking about? is this some VHDL VGA controller? usually, it doesnt care about the font unless you write some font controller, but that would be rather complicated. Much easier to have the different sizes as you said.

 

[niala72]

Yes I am writing the VGA timing generator and the font reader to generate pixels on the fly.

I have found some sample files for letters (A to Zand a to z) but only in 5 columns by 7 rows. I will make the ten digits.

But what I need is a similar file for 2x2 eventually 3x3 and 4x4 bigger sizes.

Simply repeating each pixel 2, 3 or 4 times and repeating the line 2, 3 or 4 times would give steps like on a floor and I think the result will not be acceptable. So I would find ROM files for bigger letters or a tool to do that.

In the 90' I had written a tool with Turbo C to generate a file with what was in the EGA RAM memory when I had put letters on the screen but now I am note sure I could do that again.

 

[TrickyDicky]

an FPGA is not a processor, hence you need to write your own font processor to do things with. Basically, doing it in an fpga would eat a lot of resources - a lot easier to just set the video ram from some external/internal (like a NIOS) processor

 

[niala72]

Yes I know a FPGA is not a CPU. And I could also put a processor (like a 8031) in an FPGA, as an IP block. ALTERA has such a cpu useable with QUARTUS II.

But this is not my question. I am designing a sequencer build with a CYCLONE III or IV (because of the PLL, a CYCLONE would probably be sufficient). It will deliver VGA signals (simple) and also some drawings, text and graphics. It seems to be possible to produce lines, rectangles, perhaps circles only by formulas on the fly, because a ROM pattern takes too much resource. For the text I think the best solution would be to use a ROM FONT TABLE.

AND MY PROBLEM IS to write this source table, especially to fill in with a nice pattern. I have no criteria about the font, a simple ARIAL will be good. Would it be .hex, or .bin, or VHDL or C language, no problem.

I need only uppercase and lowercase letters and digits, then 62 characters. Based upon an initial 5x7 matrix rounded to 8 bytes par character for the 1 size it would represent about 8000 bytes for the 4x size. Quite impossible to write this manually.

I hope I have explained exactly what I am looking for.

 

[FvM]

I think the question has nothing to do with VHDL. You are asking about a source of fixed (raster) fonts respectively a tool to generate it.

Firstly you'll find a lot of fixed fonts with previous Windows versions along with tools like Fontedit.

Secondly there's a number of full featured font tools that can read different font formats including scalable TTF or postscript fonts and e.g. generate raster fonts of different size.

Finally you'll find various fonts and simple font generation tools shipped with graphic LCD displays.

 

[niala72]

Thank you for your cooperation.

I have posted this request on the FPGA topic because I thought it was the good one. My question concerns finally a VHDL ROM file or some ways to make such a file.

I've just has a look at Font Edit which seems to take a Microsoft .fnt file and make another one. I am not sure I could succeed this way.

I cannot imagine that nobody has written such BITMAP files for different scales in order not to blur the edges. And I think the web is made to exchange information. Am I wrong ???

 

[FvM]

I'm not sure what's your exact problem because your posts are adressing different points.

In my view, the interesting point is generating respectively converting "good looking" fonts with required bitmap size.

The other point is about programming, converting between different data formats. Binary fonts can e.g have vertical or horizontal orientation and different left/right and up/down bit order. They can be coded in decimal or hex to be read in by compilers and synthesis tools. My guess is that it takes more time to search for exactly the font format you need than writing a few lines of C, java or tcl code that does the conversion.

 

[niala72]

I am able to convert different files in the good format for the use, that's not the problem.

What I look for is GOOD LOOKING BITMAP fonts in any format, I will write the VHDL hardware to display them after.

I THINK I WILL DO IT BY MYSELF (see bootstrap translation) AND HELP MYSELF FIRST