antkru

I have released the announced v1.0.2, I hope it is more usable now. The first screenshot shows the new UI. I have also been working on the new editor. I added an overview, which is like the viewer, but you can toggle it with o and move around, which should be great for small screens + high resolution fonts.

But I have big difficulties with ncurses: While it works perfectly fine on Arch, it produces garbage output when compiled on my Debian machine.

My Plan is now to improve the overview by adding a second zoom level and to fix it on Debian

It is my first devlog since I shipped this project! I have read the feedback: A more usable editor is on its way! Sadly, it does not have a GUI, but at least a TUI built with ncurses. It is my first time building something with ncurses (apart from some failed tries, some time ago) so it is difficult. I had to rewrite the new editor multiple times, but now I have a basic plan how it should work.
So this are my changes:

• Removed old editor
• Added placeholder default view
• Added help window

If everything goes well, I will release the new editor in v2.0.0 before flavortown ends, but I might address some smaller feedback in a v1.0.2 release.

I have prepared the first release:

• --version: prints the version
• Version is detected from git
• Improved unsaved changes indicator
• Bug fixes

• improvements for interactive commands:
  • q(uit) replaces e(xit) to be more consistent with other software
  • new command (wq): faster saving + exiting
  • unsaved indicator in main menu
• options:
  • --help : finally, I added a help option!
  • --create : creates new font files, also useful for debugging
• bug fixes

I have reworked the access to glyphs by using UTF-8 strings instead of UTF-16 codes, so I do not have to do any conversion. This is possible by using a map to look up the glyph pointers corresponding to a UTF-8 string.
Visible improvements are:

• glyphs are selected by entering the character directly, instead of using codes
• new command (list/ls): lists all the characters included in the font
  I think the current implementation still has some bugs, which I will hopefully fix soon

Just a few improvements:

• eraser mode in the editor: fill, line and clear commands are inverted
• possibility to add more glyphs to files without a unicode table: the plan is to have not only the option to modify existing fonts, but also to create new ones.

Today I did some polishing on the editor by adding new commands for

• clearing the glyph
• filling areas on the glyph
• drawing lines between two points using Bresenham’s line algorithm, with the help of Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bresenham's_line_algorithm#All_cases)

I have done many usability improvements:

• prompt:
  • different text color (better distinguishable from output)
  • completion for editing mode
  • unsaved changes indicator in editing mode (after editing the character, you still have to save from the menu)
• new editing mode:
  • commands for editing instead of manually setting each line
  • ability to undo (but not to redo)
• viewer:
  • coordinates around the glyph
  • more compact default view, instead of compact mode with reduced resolution
• new command, which shows the PSF header

Today I improved the maintainability by using a custom type for glyphs instead of vector<vector<bool>> . I also added completion with the help of readline.

Improvements:

• added new mode if the font width is higher than 32 bits, which uses 1 * 0.5 instead of 2 * 1 character, at the cost of resolution
• used GNU readline to add support for arrow keys and history

Today I added support for PSF files with unicode tables. It turned out to be more difficult than I thought, because the osdev wiki article is written for C and kernel development, but now I have a (hopefully) working implementation. I am not sure if I tested all cases, because I am not used to working with character encodings, so I will probably continue learning more about that topic.

Today I added the editing mode, so I can actually call it an editor.
I hope it works more or less intuitive. You can edit the character line by line, like shown in the screenshot.
You edit the line by entering “x” to set a bit or anything else to unset it. The equal signs can help, as they are inverted if the bit is set.

Now I will try to focus on polishing the user experience.

I have been working on some minor improvements with the viewer, like increasing the pixel size to two characters and using · for making pixels more distinguishable from the terminal background.
I also got rid of the segmentation fault that occurred when trying to read a character not included in the font file.

Finally, I also started working on the editor.

I have started this as my first public project ever, so please be kind :-)
In the end, this will be a (hopefully)working PSF file editor, but I still have a long way to go…
Until now I have implemented:

• Error messages if you try to open an invalid file
• An interactive mode with a few commands: h for help and s for showing glyphs
• The viewer (s command)

I’m working on my first project! This is so exciting. I can’t wait to share more updates as I build.