first commit

buildroot/share/fonts/uxggenpages.md

@@ -0,0 +1,110 @@
+## Language engine and tools
+
+### Supported hardware
+
+Marlin supports HD44780 character LCD and 128x64 graphical LCD via U8GLIB. Because of the limitation of HD44780 hardwares, Marlin can only support three character sets for that hardware: Japanese (kana_utf8), Russian/Cyrillic (ru), or Western (Roman characters)
+
+For the graphical LCD modules, there's far less limitation. Users and language maintainers can easily change the language translation strings when saved with UTF-8 encoding. The only extra step is to regenerate the font data from an existing BDF font file.
+
+### How to support a new language?
+
+1. Prepare the translation source file
+
+You need to add a language header file `language_xx.h`, replacing xx with the language/country code. (e.g., "en" for English). You can start with a existing language file by copying it to a new location:
+
+```bash
+cp language_zh_CN.h language_zh_TW.h
+```
+
+Then simply replace the strings inside the `_UxGT()` macros.
+
+Make sure the file is saved as UTF-8 encoded.
+
+2. Generate the font data file
+
+This step gathers the glyphs used in the language file from a 9pt bitmap font and saves the data in a language_data_xx.h file. So the font used for conversion should contain all the characters in your language file.
+
+The default bitmap font is WQY's 9pt bitmap font.
+
+Download from [here](http://wenq.org/daily/wqy-bitmapfont-bdf-gb18030-nightly_build.tar.gz), or to install in a Debian/Ubuntu system:
+
+```
+sudo apt-get install xfonts-wqy
+```
+
+You also need to compile the `bdf2u8g` binary to convert BDF font files into U8glib data structures:
+
+```bash
+cd marlin-git/buildroot/share/fonts/
+./get-bdf2u8g.sh
+```
+
+The `genallfont.sh` script generates font data for all language translation files.
+
+You may specify a list of languages to process. For example:
+
+```bash
+MARLIN_LANGS="zh_CN zh_TW"
+```
+
+and run the script to generate the font data (`language_data_xx.h`):
+
+```bash
+cd marlin-git/Marlin/
+MARLIN_LANGS="zh_CN zh_TW" ../buildroot/share/fonts/genallfont.sh
+```
+
+3. Change the language settings
+
+To compile Marlin with your language, choose a language in `Configuration.h`. For Chinese (Taiwan) you would use:
+
+```cpp
+#define LCD_LANGUAGE zh_TW
+```
+
+4. Compile and Upload the firmware
+
+Open `Marlin.ino` in your IDE and compile the firmware. Once the build succeeds, upload it to your board.
+
+### Update the language translation
+
+Whenever language files are changed, you need to run the script `genallfont.sh` again to update the font data file.
+
+### Use a cool font
+
+You may need to use a different font to support your own language, because the default 9pt font is not complete. (You may also support them by adding the missing glyphs to the font.)
+
+After you've prepared your font, specify the font file path as an argument to `genallfont.sh`, so that the font used for your language is your new font. For example, if your font is named `newfont.bdf` run the following command:
+
+```bash
+cd Marlin/
+../buildroot/share/fonts/genallfont.sh ./newfont.bdf
+```
+
+...or to regenerate the language font data for a specific language:
+
+```bash
+MARLIN_LANGS="zh_TW" ../buildroot/share/fonts/genallfont.sh ./newfont.bdf
+```
+
+### Suggestions for Maintainers
+
+The tool and the language engine can be easily updated. Since it uses common bitmap font files and UTF-8 text, the maintainer needs to confirm that the font contains the glyphs in the language files.
+
+At this time, the font file `marlin-6x12-3.bdf` is used to generate the font data. It combines all of Marlin's ISO10646-1 fonts and the WQY 9pt bitmap font.
+
+### Related resources
+
+#### Fonts
+
+- [WQY](http://wenq.org/)
+- [WQY 9pt bitmap font](http://wenq.org/daily/wqy-bitmapfont-bdf-gb18030-nightly_build.tar.gz)
+- [unifont (16x8 or 16x16)](https://unifoundry.com/unifont.html)
+
+Documents related to the old version of the language engine:
+
+- [Marlin Fonts Documentation](https://www.marlinfw.org/docs/development/fonts.html)
+- [Marlin LCD Language](https://marlinfw.org/docs/development/lcd_language.html)
+- [U8GLIB](https://github.com/olikraus/u8glib.git)
+- [UTF-8 for U8GLIB](https://github.com/yhfudev/u8glib-fontutf8.git)
+- [Standalone test project for the Marlin UTF-8 language engine](https://github.com/yhfudev/marlin-fontutf8.git)