FR935 - font not small enough

Yes, the 935 fonts and f5 fonts are the same. I'm sure the UX guide will be updated by the 2.3.1 SDK release to include the 935. (meantime, you can also see the data in the devices.xml file in the SDK)

If you want a smaller font than XTINY, look at doing a custom font (that's shown in the Programmer's guide and there's a tool called BMFont that's used.

Thank you Jim looks like I'll be trying custom fonts for the first time.

Is there anything special to look out for? Any font name others have tried that works well? I need full A-Z and a-z, 0-9 character set.

Thank you Jim looks like I'll be trying custom fonts for the first time.

Is there anything special to look out for? Any font name others have tried that works well? I need full A-Z and a-z, 0-9 character set.

Look through the forum, as there are others that wanted something smaller than XTINY on a f5, as to the font they used, etc. In one thread there's a video that Petr (the Actiface developer) did about how to create and use custom fonts.

Thanks again Jim. I should have searched the forum first, there are quite a few threads on this issue.

It seems there is a quite a desire for a smaller font mapped to FONT_XTINY for the new 240 x 240 resolution devices (F5 and 935), hopefully Garmin make this change longer term.

Yes, the 935 fonts and f5 fonts are the same. I'm sure the UX guide will be updated by the 2.3.1 SDK release to include the 935. (meantime, you can also see the data in the devices.xml file in the SDK)

If you want a smaller font than XTINY, look at doing a custom font (that's shown in the Programmer's guide and there's a tool called BMFont that's used.

Jim is correct. The fenix 5 and Forerunner 935 fonts will be the same and the UX guide is being updated currently.

Thanks!
-Coleman

Yeah, not too fond (hah!) of the smallest font either...

Hard to get a lot of data on the screen without going to custom fonts. I actually gave it a try for my new watchface, and it IS pretty doable, but would be nice if it wasn't necessary.

Hi Flipstone, I agree. I've persevered without going to custom fonts, it takes more work to optimise the layout, but is possible, and in the end more readable.

Custom fonts aren't too bad to use once you've done a couple. It might be something more common for people doing watch faces.

As I mentioned before Petr (Actiface) did a video on building a WF with a custom font and Hermo (NoFrills) did a blog post on some of the tricks he uses https://developer.garmin.com/index.php/blog/post/connect-iq-pro-tip-custom-fonts-tricks. For me, I use custom fonts in about all my watchfaces - for the icons if nothing else (yes, thats a nice use of a custom font).

I always try to use the native fonts in things other than WFs though, so my stuff has the same look as the native apps, but if needed, I'll use a custom one (I do use my iconFont in a few apps...)

The hardest part is deciding what font you want to use for the custom font.

Custom fonts aren't too bad to use once you've done a couple. It might be something more common for people doing watch faces.

As I mentioned before Petr (Actiface) did a video on building a WF with a custom font and Hermo (NoFrills) did a blog post on some of the tricks he uses https://developer.garmin.com/index.php/blog/post/connect-iq-pro-tip-custom-fonts-tricks. For me, I use custom fonts in about all my watchfaces - for the icons if nothing else (yes, thats a nice use of a custom font).

I always try to use the native fonts in things other than WFs though, so my stuff has the same look as the native apps, but if needed, I'll use a custom one (I do use my iconFont in a few apps...)

The hardest part is deciding what font you want to use for the custom font.

Yeah, I agree custom fonts aren't too hard once you know the drill... Using them for icons is a nice trick indeed btw!

But is there also an easy way to 'scale' fonts? Or create custom fonts which are half width of the original one? I know it is possible using an image editor to scale the png generated by bmfont and manually editing the corresponding .fnt file but that's pretty tedious (and sometimes tricky).

But is there also an easy way to 'scale' fonts?

Yes, if the fonts in question are created and/or stored in a vector-based format in the first place. (Oh, and on a Garmin device you'd need to store different sizes of the same font face as separate bitmapped fonts anyway, so scaling and storage capacity consumption are logically separate again).

No, if your question pertains to a bitmapped font you handcrafted (or downloaded from somewhere).