Rebuild 16x16.fnt CD menu font from Ubuntu Font Family

[Paul Sladen]

Binary package hint: gfxboot-theme-ubuntu

Investigate switching the '16x16.fnt' used for the boot menu on the CDs to a bitmap rendering generated from the Ubuntu Font Family. It will re-enforce the Ubuntu style and branding from the first visible screen. Currently the screen looks like:

  http://www.hackourlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Ubuntu-10.10_0011.jpeg

Rebuilding the font has in the past only been done rarely and manually; it is not part of the normal Debian package build process. Rules added by cjwatson to do it can be accessed via 'make font' and are in the Makefile in the top-level of the 'gfxboot-theme-ubuntu' source. The theme package is common to all Ubuntu derivatives; it contains the font and codebase but not logos or textual information which are provided by other packages, so only one package would need to be updated.

The '16x16.fnt' is currently 62kB (~42kB compressed) and should be much the same afterwards unless the amount of coverage was significantly increased, although this is not envisioned. The manual font rebuild process uses a utility called 'mkblfont' which can be found in the 'gfxboot' package for distributions up until lucid, after which which it seems to have vanished. The Ubuntu Font Family rendering would preferably be done using the bi-level hinted forms to get a good rendering in the correct format.

At the same time, it may be desirable to tweak the colour scheme to those in the Ubuntu palette (warm and light grays); but this is less about the platform and may be better done in individual themes.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.