[vdr] Re: font-patch against AIO0804

[Carsten Koch <Carsten.Koch@icem.de>]

Alessio Sangalli wrote:
...
> You discovered what I was suspecting but I had no time to test. I think
> however that changing the setup preferences from lines to pixels is a
> bit overkill.

I agree.
Of course, what limits the OSD size is ARM memory, which is a function
of the size in pixels, not in lines/columns. With a variable font size
this is no longer the same thing. 
What the end user really cares about is a size that visually fits nicely 
onto the TV screen and still works (i.e. fits into the ARM memory).
In fact, the user does not care at all about any kind of numbers.
IIRC, the DVB2000 firmware simply allows you to reshape the OSD 
rectangles with the cursor keys until they look the way you want.
Nevertheless you are right, cleaning this up 100% is more work than
it may be worth.


> For now, font selection is at compile time. It would be
> enought to modify the calendar patch so it can accept a variable line
> height.

Yes. @Gerald, how much work would that be?

Of course, it would actually not be too hard to grab all suitable X
fonts during VDR installation setup, add them to the default font files 
provided with the vdr distribution and make the fonts runtime-selectable 
setup parameters. That would also solve any legal problems.


> However, I would like some feedback to the new font package I've built:
> I think some experiments I've made are really ugly because of the screen
> interlacing, but others are really good, and improve readability on the
> screen very much.

I took a look at all the headers first. 
The current fontosd-small.c is 22 pixels high. 
All fonts in your new package are higher except fontosd-tahoma16.c
and fontosd-verdana16.c. 
So I tried these two. 
IMHO, both look a lot uglier than the original fontosd-small.c.

I am sure the larger fonts look better, but I personally prefer to have
as much information per screen as possible. After all, wasn't that
the whole point of the small font patch? (and also of course of this
new discussion thread).

Carsten.