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More alphabets and where the project is going

A project log for Arduino Desktop

The desktop with an arduino as the main processor. Multitasking, Gaming, Graphics, and (later) File IO

dylan-brophyDylan Brophy 08/13/2017 at 20:363 Comments

I love language so I decided to add some new alphabets.  I added the characters in the Cyrillic alphabet that are used in Russian, plus the characters from an alphabet I made up for fun a while back.

Now I can print with more characters:

On top: Hello World!

On bottom: Hello (Informal)

Benefits:

  1. more alphabets
  2. smaller text (so more can fit on the screen)
  3. adjustable character length

Drawbacks:

  1. Slower loading and displaying
  2. Only white characters are supported - no green or red
  3. can't really mix with Latin alphabet due to size and interface differences

I also ported a simple game I made for the ATmega328p a few years back:

Other than those things, however, my project is so far somewhat useless.  The biggest drawback is that it isn't currently possible to execute some generic program:  all must be hard coded into the OS (essentially).  Well, I remember a while back reading that Java had been ported to AVR - uJ.  Adding this and enabling Ethernet would allow community made programs to be downloaded and executed to the Arduino Desktop without the aid of another computer.  Not that it has a community - but you hopefully get the point.  Java enables a useful stand alone system.  Also, since I have the extra 32KiB RAM I have more room for programs, plus graphics and keyboard....  Soon hopefully Ethernet and SD support too.

Discussions

Andrey Skvortsov wrote 08/14/2017 at 17:58 point

Looks promising! If the Propeller's internal ROM font could been modified things will be simpler.

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Dylan Brophy wrote 08/14/2017 at 19:12 point

Good news!  The NGT20 relies on a file created by Chip Gracey, Graphics.spin, which does the drawing to the screen.  It doesn't use the ROM font, it uses its own vector font for text resizing.  So, the text size is modifiable.  It would also be nice to add a new command to display sprites as fonts, so that displaying the characters would be faster.  I will look into these and see what I can do.

EDIT - seems the font size for that vector font is already the smallest.  I may be able to change the font itself, but it may make the font look really wierd

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Dylan Brophy wrote 08/14/2017 at 20:41 point

Or - maybe I can make it use the ROM font, maybe the size is compatible

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