| Author |
GUIDE: How to change system font on P990 |
Enigma-UK
Joined: Jun 20, 2004
Posts: 72
From: UK
PM, WWW
|
Hi all,
On my P990 forum I have just posted a guide on how to change the system font (safe method keeping originals) for the P990 Smartphone. Apologies if this has been covered already - I couldn't find anything here so hope this is of use to somebody!
For some reason the IPB forum (my forum) doesn't allow guests to view actual posts so I will post the method here.
As I update the guide though I will do this on my forum where I also hope to get some screenshots up as well.
Here's the guide, hope it makes sense, any problems please discuss here or on the topic at:
http://p990.3.forumer.com/index.php?showtopic=35
CHANGING P990 SYSTEM FONT
===============================
Summary: You can force the phone to use different fonts by creating a fonts folder on your memory card (MS Pro Duo) and this guide will show you how.
--------------------------------------------------------
IMPORTANT NOTE - PLEASE READ
--------------------------------------------------------
Never edit, or overwrite the fonts on the system drive of your P990 (C: or Z: Rom) - this font trick uses the memory card to overwrite the font so if you mess it up when testing fonts, or you choose a font which displays wrongly, you haven't ruined your phones ROM. Simply remove the memory card, delete the fonts in a card reader, then replace and restart phone to get the original font back! (Or restart phone without memory card in...)
---------------------------------------------------------
CHOOSE/RENAME YOUR FONT
---------------------------------------------------------
Ideally you need a font that comes with the 4 styles: Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic. If not you can use a single basic regular font, or a 2 style regular/bold font. But if you do this you may lose some formatting, not so much in the phone's OS, but when using the browser or viewing documents you will not view any italic/bold-italic etc. Remember you can trial different fonts to see what suits you best.
The font used by the P990 is Sans Serif Latin and is named according to the 4 different styles:
1) Sans-Serif_Latin-Regular.ttf
2) Sans-Serif_Latin-Bold.ttf
3) Sans-Serif_Latin-Italic.ttf
4) Sans-Serif_Latin-BoldItalic.ttf
The easiest way is to rename your font to these filenames.
For example if you only have a single font: myfont.ttf (a regular font) then you would make 4 copies of it and rename them like so:
1) myfont.ttf ----> Sans-Serif_Latin-Regular.ttf
2) myfont.ttf ----> Sans-Serif_Latin-Bold.ttf
3) myfont.ttf ----> Sans-Serif_Latin-Italic.ttf
4) myfont.ttf ----> Sans-Serif_Latin-BoldItalic.ttf
If you have a 2 style font (Regular/Bold) then the Regular can be renamed to 1) and 3) and the Bold can be renamed to 2) and 4) so at least you can have Bold/Regular Style.
Obviously if you can find a 4 style font you can get the best effect by matching each font to a corresponding file name: bold to bold, bolditalic to bolditalic etc...
WARNING: Be careful when choosing fonts. Stick to fairly basic fonts that do not have loads of extra characters and symbols as these push up files sizes. If you can get hold of a good font editor you can strip out all the characters you don't need to reduce the font file size. The smaller the better, as dumping a 5MB font file won't help with loading times and display caching. The file I use is 57Kb, ideally you want something of similar size. Remember: Just because a 20MB font file will fit on a 2Gb Memory Stick, it won't load into the phone RAM without crashing it out!
---------------------------------------------------------
ADDING FONT TO THE PHONE
---------------------------------------------------------
Put your memory card into a card reader and create a folder in the root called "resource"
Now open this folder and create a subfolder called "fonts"
You should have this directory available:
D:/resource/fonts
where D: is your memory card drive.
Note it is best to use a card reader to do this. Trying to create this folder with the memory card inserted in the phone using Swiss Manager or the built in file manager may result in an error as you are creating a folder with a protected name.
Now copy the 4 font files into this folder.
Place memory card back into phone and reboot it!
You should now see your fonts in action.
If there is a problem displaying you can simply remove the memory card and restart the phone without it which will cause the unit to default to the ROM fonts.
Now you can pop the memory card back into a reader and delete the problem files, then choose another font and try again!
DISCLAIMER: Like anything, if you are unsure about what you are doing, seek advice here or leave alone! This process is reversible, but TAKE CARE!
Dan
_________________
SE P990 Smartphone Forum
http://p990.forumer.com
[ This Message was edited by: Enigma-UK on 2006-11-29 23:58 ]
[ This Message was edited by: Enigma-UK on 2006-11-30 00:01 ] |
|
|
Aware
Joined: Jun 24, 2006
Posts: > 500
From: Oxon, UK
PM |
Nice! Will definitely try this!!
 |
tonyitalian
Joined: Sep 02, 2004
Posts: > 500
From: Earth
PM |
how do u change the font size on a p990?/
SE Rulez! |
PeterKay
Joined: Jul 08, 2003
Posts: > 500
From: The Ummah
PM, WWW
|
Thanks for the guide, appreciate it.
|
Enigma-UK
Joined: Jun 20, 2004
Posts: 72
From: UK
PM, WWW
|
Quote:
|
On 2006-11-30 06:46:56, tonyitalian wrote:
how do u change the font size on a p990?/
|
|
Not sure on this one I'm afraid. The P990 seems to adjust the font to fit what is needed. So far I've not had any text outside of buttons or menus. I know SMan could do this job on the P910 so I will keep looking at ways to do this, as i would be great to fit more text on to the SMS screen/browser without scrolling as much!
EDIT: Have been using the VJNina font - looks very crisp, clean and smart. It resizes itself so not had any problem with it.
[ This Message was edited by: enigma-uk on 2006-12-07 20:25 ] |
Enigma-UK
Joined: Jun 20, 2004
Posts: 72
From: UK
PM, WWW
|
Trying to get a screenshot off of the P990 to show off the different fonts. Is there any software that will do the job or is it just a case of taking a photo of the screen with another phone. Google didn't come up with anything. 
|
scroitoru
Joined: Jul 11, 2003
Posts: > 500
From: Chicago
PM |
use this program
http://space2.wordpress.com/tag/tosc/ posted here http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=134467
[addsig] |
Enigma-UK
Joined: Jun 20, 2004
Posts: 72
From: UK
PM, WWW
|
Perfect, cheers! 
|
sealover94
Joined: Oct 25, 2006
Posts: > 500
PM, WWW
|
Is there a tip to fix this problem??:
When i try to write SMS in my language(greek) i have ONLY 72chars/sms and not 160...
I now that there is a problem with unicode chars but can anyone help me?? |
HarvJH
Joined: Jan 30, 2006
Posts: 319
From: Essex, UK
PM |
Anyone got any screen shots yet? |
firetech
Joined: Dec 09, 2006
Posts: 295
From: Lund, Sweden
PM |
@sealover94:
That has NOTHING at all to do with fonts, and there's nothing (probably, read the bold text at the end of the post) you can do about it. Heres why:
By default, 7-bit encoding is used for SMS messages. 7-bit means that every character is sent as 7 bits (1 or 0) in a row. 7 bits per character mens that only 128 (2^7) characters are possible. Since 7-bit is also known as ASCII, and A in ASCII stands for American, it only has room for the English alphabet and a lot of other characters like dots, commas, brackets etc. Using 7-bit means that every SMS can be up to 128*160 = 20480 bits long.
However, when you type with Greek letters, they don't fit in the 7 bits used, so a "better" encoding is used. The other encoding uses more bits per character, so to fit in the same amount of total bits, less characters can be entered. There are localized versions of the ASCII table (which just skips some of the less used characters in the normal table, like { for example). However, it seems no better than that the greek localization of the P990 doesn't use a localized 7-bit encoding (other phones might, I'm not sure). If you're using English localization of the phone, it's not very strange, though, since the phone then naturally uses the standard English ASCII.
P.S. I'm no expert on how SMS messages work, but I know quite a lot about text encodings... Please correct me if I'm wrong.
_________________
P990i + 1GB MS + CAR-100 (+ Z600 to charge and start the CAR with)
I  my P990i
[ This Message was edited by: firetech on 2007-01-05 12:52 ] |
ilias1974
Joined: Aug 26, 2006
Posts: 10
PM |
I think that there is a way to send long (160) greek messages (7bit), on the condition to use only capital letter. Have a look at the following table:
http://www.dreamfabric.com/sms/default_alphabet.html
I think that the above method is widely used in all greek phones. And our demand from SE is to apply this method to the P990. |
Laetitya
Joined: Jun 24, 2004
Posts: 320
From: Switzerland
PM, WWW
|
For some unknown reason, the font changing does not work with me! I followed the step by step instructions! I already had a folder on my memory stick called "resource" with two subfolders in it: "help" and "apps" so I just added another subfolder called "fonts" and added my new and re-named fonts to that, but it did not work. |
Laetitya
Joined: Jun 24, 2004
Posts: 320
From: Switzerland
PM, WWW
|
It works now. The reason was that I had named the files .ttf and it ended up making them .ttf.ttf so that is why it would not work. When naming the fonts, make sure to name them without the .ttf at the end. |
firetech
Joined: Dec 09, 2006
Posts: 295
From: Lund, Sweden
PM |
@Laetitya
There is a setting in Windows to not show known file endings (E.G. '.ttf'), which is on by default. The correct advice to give here is to only have .ttf in the end of the filename if it was there borefore you renamed the file.
Anyway, to change this (first thing I do with a new Windows...), Open Windows Explorer, go to View > Folder Options and in that box, uncheck 'Hide file endings for known file types' or something in that fashion.
P990i (GW1) + 4GB MS
This signature is (probably) brought to you with the help of HTTP. |
|
|
Posted: 2006-11-30 00:55
