v0.10.0

This release is about sharp text on the reader's screen. The preview can zoom in until you see every pixel the reader draws, it scores how cleanly the strokes of the text land on those pixels, and Fit to grid finds the point sizes that score best for your font.

New

See every pixel the reader draws

Turn on zoom under Device preview to enlarge the page in whole-pixel blocks, from 2× to 64×, so you can see exactly how each letter lands on the screen. A light grid marks the edges between pixels from 6× up, without dimming the ink. The zoomed page fills the panel it sits on, and stays on the same letters while you change settings.

• Drag to move around. Hold Alt and turn the wheel to zoom around the pointer, or double-click a spot.
• Hold Z to let the zoomed page fill the whole browser window, and let go to see the controls again. While Z is held, the wheel alone zooms.
• The button beside + moves the zoom into a window of its own, which you can put next to the browser or on another screen. It remembers where you left it.
• The copy button copies the zoomed view at its own size, with the grid if it is showing.

Zoom in on the pixels

Know how sharp a size will look

The strip at the foot of the page shows its Grid Fit, a score from 0 to 100. A straight stroke that lands exactly on whole pixels is black to its edges, and one that lands between them gets a column of grey that reads as blur on e-ink. Grid Fit counts that grey along the upright strokes (X) and the flat ones (Y) of the text on the page. A small pill beside it shows how much your last change moved it, and pressing the score shows it for each style.

Check how sharp the strokes are

Let CrossGlyph pick the sharpest sizes

A quarter of a point can move a stem onto whole pixels or off them. Fit to grid, under the size boxes in Export, searches the sizes around each of yours for the one with the best Grid Fit, while keeping the number the reader shows in its Font Size list. Press Find sizes, compare a suggestion with your size in one press, untick any you do not want, and press Apply. Undo puts your sizes back.

To start a size list from scratch, choose Range, set where it starts, the step and how many sizes, and search those instead. Fill boxes writes a range into the size boxes as it is, with no search.

Fit sizes to the pixel grid

Improved

• Page: new word spacing and character spacing controls apply the reader's own settings of the same name, on top of the font.
• Export: select a size box to see the page at the size it holds. The box the page is showing is marked, and the Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large names are gone, since the reader lists sizes by number.
• Text: a Portuguese sample, and Portuguese in hyphenate as.
• Rendering: the preview draws with the drawing code of the current CrossPoint firmware, so the page matches what an up-to-date reader shows.
• Config: a new max_ink_top = yes setting, in a family's .conf or in all.conf, stores how far each style's tallest character reaches above the line. It is for firmware that uses it to keep tall accents from being cut off at the top of the screen. CrossPoint does not read it, so leave it off unless your firmware asks for it. It has no control in the preview.

Fixed

• A family whose own config file could not be read quietly used the shared settings in all.conf, so its sizes and fallbacks changed with nothing on screen to say why. The Export panel lists every such file, the reason, and how to fix it.

Before you update

• Sizes 5 to 8 join the family's own size list unless a suffix is set. If a family has sizes there and no suffix in its config, its next build makes one family and removes the second family's Mod files. To keep two families, add mod_suffix = Mod to the family's config, or type a suffix in Export.

Every change since v0.9.1