vkdt uses multi-signed distance fields for scale invariant font rendering.
these can be created by the full featured and matured msdf-atlas-gen utility.
this might be interesting for a customised look or if you depend on non-ascii
glyphs such as japanese codepoints.
to generate the required .lut files for vkdt, do the following:
build msdf-atlas-gen without the agonizing bloat or micr0soft tracking:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/Chlumsky/msdf-atlas-gen
cd msdf-atlas-gen
# the following two are not needed if you cloned recursively:
git submodule init
git submodule update -f
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DMSDF_ATLAS_USE_VCPKG=off -DMSDF_ATLAS_USE_SKIA=off ..
make -j20
copy a ttf/otf of your choice (the example uses Roboto-Regular.ttf) into the build/ directory, as well as
MaterialIcons-Regular.ttf for the ui. then generate the font atlas
bin/msdf-atlas-gen -outerpxpadding 2 -size 64 -yorigin top -type msdf -format png -imageout atlas.png -json metrics.json -font Roboto-Regular.ttf -chars "[' ','~']" -fontscale 1 -and -font MaterialIcons-Regular.ttf -chars 0xe01f,0xe020,0xe034,0xe037,0xe042,0xe044,0xe045,0xe047,0xe15b,0xe5e0,0xe5e1,0xe612,0xe836,0xe838 -fontscale 1
replace the -chars entries by your custom codepoint ranges. for instance for
chinese characters you can use -chars [0x4e00,0x9fd0] in conjunction with a font file
that holds these codepoints:
bin/msdf-atlas-gen -outerpxpadding 2 -size 64 -yorigin top -type msdf -format png -imageout atlas.png -json metrics.json -font 'NotoSansSC-Regular.ttf' -chars "[' ','~'],[0x4E00,0x9fd0]" -fontscale 1 -and -font MaterialIcons-Regular.ttf -chars 0xe01f,0xe020,0xe034,0xe037,0xe042,0xe044,0xe045,0xe047,0xe15b,0xe5e0,0xe5e1,0xe612,0xe836,0xe838 -fontscale 1
note that this can take a few minutes.
the material icon codepoints are needed for vkdt's ui rendering:
0xe01f, // next keyframe
0xe020, // prev keyframe
0xe034, // pause
0xe037, // play
0xe042, // rewind
0xe044, // next frame
0xe045, // prev frame
0xe047, // stop
0xe15b, // module cannot be disabled
0xe5e1, // expander closed
0xe5e0, // expander open
0xe612, // module disabled
0xe836, // module not disabled
0xe838, // star
then convert the png atlas to .lut by executing fontlut.py
in this directory:
python fontlut.py
the two .lut files go into bin/data or your home directory .config/vkdt/data.
you can hold multiple font atlases in your data directory at the same time
and select which by pointing vkdt to one of them in the config file
~/.config/vkdt/config.rc:
..
strgui/msdffont:font
..
this entry above will use font_metrics.lut and font_msdf.lut (note the common
prefix of the file names).
if you want to install a chinese font at the side, inside the atlas gen build directory, do
$ mv font_metrics.lut ~/.config/vkdt/data/cnfont_metrics.lut
$ mv font_msdf.lut ~/.config/vkdt/data/cnfont_msdf.lut
and set, in ~/.config/vkdt/config.rc:
strgui/msdffont:cnfont