Wishlist: Use Ubuntu font for pre-installer gfxboot menus

[Paul Sladen]

Gfxboot displays the menus shown at the first step of the installer CD. The font currently used is the 8x16 GNU unifont with space removal to use it as a proportionally spaced font. The final result is a unicode bitmap called '16x16.fnt' in the format which gfxboot expects to read. Since this is proportional and flexible than the other other bitmap console environments, we can use the fonts that are already available.

In the 'gfxboot-theme-ubuntu' source code 'Makefile', the recipe I've been testing is:

font 16x16.fnt 16x16.fnt.log: keytables.inc install/log boot/log langlist langnames.inc
        @if [ -z "$(DI_PATH)" ]; then echo "Please set DI_PATH to an unpacked debian-installer source tree" >&2; exit 1; fi
        cat po/*.po >tmp.txt
        cat $(DI_PATH)/build/boot/x86/po/*.po >>tmp.txt
        gfxboot-font -v -v -v -v -H 16 -l 18 -p "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ubuntu-font-family/:/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc" \
        -c ISO-8859-15 -c ISO-8859-2 -c koi8-r \
        `$(KEYMAPCHARS) keytables.inc` \
        -t tmp.txt \
        -t install/log -t boot/log \
        -t langlist -t langnames.inc \
        -f Ubuntu-R:space_width=4:size=14:autohint=0 \
        -f unifont:prop=2:space_width=4 \
        16x16.fnt >16x16.fnt.log
        rm -f tmp.txt

The output can then be visually explored using 'less 16x16.fnt.log'. The font is data-only and is also built manually rather than as part of the package build process. 'gfxboot-font' was previously called 'mkblfont' in versions of Ubuntu up until Lucid. The 'gfxboot-font' program can be found in the 'gfxboot-dev' package.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

First cut of a combined Ubuntu-Regular (proportional)/Unifont (fake proportional) on the top with the current default on the bottom. Looks a bit smaller and the line-heights need tweaking but it's shows the proof of concept that it can be done in a fairly non-invasive manner.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gfxboot-theme-ubuntu (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]