Acknowledged
9 months ago

Fenix 8 - Font Missing - BionicBold

Just picked up a Fenix 8 51mm today, tested my app and noticed that the fonts are not correct

The Fenix 8 51mm FW 11.60 can't find the BonicBold Font as is displaying my fallback font of RobotoRegular instead.

The screenshot below shows the same app running on the Simulator, Epix 2, and the Fenix 8 51mm. The Sim and Epix2 are clearly showing the same font (BionicBold)

There is also a difference in displayed font size as well. You will notice that everything on the Fenix 8 seems a little squashed together and the time at the top of the display has been clipped. Am I right in assuming that a vector font of size X should display as the same physical size on the watch regardless of the font selected ? (ie the RobotoRegular font is clealry larger than the BionicBold font given the same font size.

Rick
  • 9 months ago

    This bug report is interesting:

    https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/i/bug-reports/scalable-bionicbold-font-missing

    Forerunner 955 / Solar: After the firmware update to 20.26, the Scalable BionicBold font is missing.

    Fenix ​​8 47mm / 51mm, fēnix 8 43mm, fēnix E: The Scalable BionicBold font specified in the description is also missing here.

    Why is this font no longer installed and yet described in the device references?

    My watch faces no longer work because I use this font.

    This suggests that BionicBold was removed from 955 (and other devices? *) on purpose (for some reason). It may be possible that Fenix 8 was supposed to have BionicBold at some point, too.

    (* note that seemingly all the current devices which share a common firmware base - Fenix 7*, Fenix 7* Pro, FR165/255/265/955/965, Epix gen 2, etc. - are supposed to have BionicBold, according to the SDK device definition files.)

    
	
    

    

    
	
    
		
	
    

    

    
		 			
    
		
	
    

    

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			9 months ago
		
									
					in reply to Rick
				
						
    

    

    
			
    The question is, if the FW is missing the font, or is the doc wrong...
    

    Getting it added to the FW could take awhile, and CIQ stuff there tends to be a low priority.  It could also be it was dropped from the FW, because the FW on the f8 doesn't use this font and the doc hasn't caught up..
    

    What I would do as a workaround right now, is find a fallback font that looks good to you.
    
	
    

    

    
	
    
		
	
    

    

    
		 			
    
		
	
    

    

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			9 months ago
		
									
					in reply to jim_m_58
				
						
    

    

    
			
    Hi Jim,
    

    

    The SIM is set at Fenix 8 47/51mm, ie the same as the device. The Reference Guide shows that the Fenix 8 does have BionicBold. So from this perspective, the Simulator is accurately representing the capabilities of the Fenix 8, but the real device does not match the documented capabilities. ie. It is missing the BionicBold font.
    

    

    Rick
    
	
    

    

    
	
    
		
	
    

    

    
		 			
    
		
	
    

    

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			9 months ago
		
			
    

    

    
			
    > Am I right in assuming that a vector font of size X should display as the same physical size on the watch regardless of the font selected?
    

    I don't think so, as this is not true in general (i.e. in non-Garmin contexts.)
    

    https://practicaltypography.com/point-size.html
    

    https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/167290/why-do-different-fonts-have-different-point-sizes
    

    stackoverflow.com/.../45579902
    

    (Similarly, non-vector fonts on some Garmin devices have a huge amount of whitespace above the characters, which means that they may appear too small if you try to automatically size them based on the font height reported by the API.)
    
	
    

    

    
	
    
		
	
    

    

    
		 			
    
		
	
    

    

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			9 months ago
		
			
    

    

    
			
    If you change your app so it uses the vector font in the sim that you're using on the real f8, does the sim now look like the real f8?  And does the Epix2 look the same as on the f8?
    

    Not all vector fonts are available on all devices.  That's why you can do the fallbacks with the getVectorFont() call.  I think it was the venu3 vs a forerunner where I first ran into this...
    

    So it may not be that the real f8 is missing the font, but the device definition for the f8 used by the sim, includes a font that's not available for the device
    
	
    

    

    
	
    
		
	
    

    

    
		 			
    
		
	
    

    

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