Option to remove or custom text in Status bar & logo, change terminal font

[bobricius]

Hi, I love circuit python, you are doing a great work
working on display independent terminal aps which can use "print" command to show
data in terminal style on LCD display
Unfortunately on 0.96" 80x160 display I kill half of display with blinka logo
I found command
supervisor.status_bar.console = False
it disable text but logo remaining and half of display is death
I read somewhere that is compilation option but I prefer mainstream distribution for Raspberry PICO instead custom build
I would also like to be able to change the terminal font without custom build.
Status bar is cool feature, would be great if I could change the text
with etc somethig like
supervisor.status.text = "Sending data ..."
Thanks very much for this great project!

[dhalbert]

The status bar is updated by sending out a "OSC" Xterm escape sequence. This can just be done with print(), though we should probably document how to do this, or add a helper routine. This gets sent directly to the connected terminal (if any), and is intercepted by the REPL display and interpreted.

Suppressing the icon is a separate thing we could allow the user to enable/disable.

[HelenFoster]

I agree that it's useful to be able to use the whole screen for terminal on smaller screen sizes.

Neradoc posted this in the Discord, but it's really not obvious.
https://discord.com/channels/327254708534116352/537365702651150357/1035320266852667422

display.root_group[0].hidden = False
display.root_group[1].hidden = True # logo
display.root_group[2].hidden = True # status bar
supervisor.reset_terminal(display.width, display.height * 2)
display.root_group[0].y = 0

[bobricius]

Thanks very much, It is crazy, looks like there is many secret features.

not understand why
supervisor.reset_terminal(display.width, display.height * 2)

etc for 80x160 display works only
supervisor.reset_terminal(display.width,95)

and for 320x240 is best value
supervisor.reset_terminal(display.width, 260)

but now that I think about it, the status bar (without logo) is a great feature, but I would like to be able to write in it via
print()

and also need bigger font

[deshipu]

You can set display.root_group.scale=2 to make it use double pixels, which technically makes the font bigger, though it doesn't look that great. Of course you will need to adjust the size of the terminal too. Unfortunately the font is compiled into the firmware, so to use a different font, you would need a custom build.

[bobricius]

Thanks Radomir, I can now read without glasses. Where do you go for that secret information? I didn't find it documented anywhere. Which font format is recommended for custom build?
Is somewhere secret setting to make display faster? (using Pico & st7789 320x240) maybe SPI speed?

[deshipu]

The scale parameter of a group is documented here: https://docs.circuitpython.org/en/latest/shared-bindings/displayio/#displayio.Group.scale
The baudrate can be set when creating the FourWire bus: https://docs.circuitpython.org/en/latest/shared-bindings/displayio/#displayio.FourWire
The font can be set in the board definition like this: https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython/blob/main/ports/atmel-samd/boards/ugame10/mpconfigboard.mk#L37 -- it uses .bdf format. You can create/edit it using FontForge.

[bobricius]

Custom font compilation works with brutalist-6.bdf
My font Pavlova16s.bdf give this errors:
make BOARD=armachat Use make V=1, make V=2 or set BUILD_VERBOSE similarly in your environment to increase build verbosity. mkdir -p build-armachat/genhdr GEN build-armachat/genhdr/moduledefs.h QSTR updated Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/bobor/Desktop/circuitpython/ports/raspberrypi/../../tools/gen_display_resources.py", line 94, in <module> b[overall_bit // 8] |= 1 << (7 - (overall_bit % 8)) IndexError: bytearray index out of range make: *** [../../supervisor/supervisor.mk:234: build-armachat/autogen_display_resources-en_US.c] Error 1 make: *** Deleting file 'build-armachat/autogen_display_resources-en_US.c'
pavlova16s.bdf.txt

[deshipu]

Sounds like a bug.