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111 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
111 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
## Language engine and tools
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### Supported hardware
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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)
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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.
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### How to support a new language?
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1. Prepare the translation source file
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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:
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```bash
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cp language_zh_CN.h language_zh_TW.h
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```
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Then simply replace the strings inside the `_UxGT()` macros.
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Make sure the file is saved as UTF-8 encoded.
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2. Generate the font data file
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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.
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The default bitmap font is WQY's 9pt bitmap font.
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Download from [here](http://wenq.org/daily/wqy-bitmapfont-bdf-gb18030-nightly_build.tar.gz), or to install in a Debian/Ubuntu system:
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```
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sudo apt-get install xfonts-wqy
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```
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You also need to compile the `bdf2u8g` binary to convert BDF font files into U8glib data structures:
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```bash
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cd marlin-git/buildroot/share/fonts/
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./get-bdf2u8g.sh
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```
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The `genallfont.sh` script generates font data for all language translation files.
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You may specify a list of languages to process. For example:
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```bash
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MARLIN_LANGS="zh_CN zh_TW"
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```
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and run the script to generate the font data (`language_data_xx.h`):
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```bash
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cd marlin-git/Marlin/
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MARLIN_LANGS="zh_CN zh_TW" ../buildroot/share/fonts/genallfont.sh
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```
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3. Change the language settings
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To compile Marlin with your language, choose a language in `Configuration.h`. For Chinese (Taiwan) you would use:
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```cpp
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#define LCD_LANGUAGE zh_TW
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```
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4. Compile and Upload the firmware
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Open `Marlin.ino` in your IDE and compile the firmware. Once the build succeeds, upload it to your board.
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### Update the language translation
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Whenever language files are changed, you need to run the script `genallfont.sh` again to update the font data file.
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### Use a cool font
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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.)
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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:
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```bash
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cd Marlin/
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../buildroot/share/fonts/genallfont.sh ./newfont.bdf
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```
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...or to regenerate the language font data for a specific language:
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```bash
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MARLIN_LANGS="zh_TW" ../buildroot/share/fonts/genallfont.sh ./newfont.bdf
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```
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### Suggestions for Maintainers
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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.
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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.
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### Related resources
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#### Fonts
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- [WQY](http://wenq.org/)
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- [WQY 9pt bitmap font](http://wenq.org/daily/wqy-bitmapfont-bdf-gb18030-nightly_build.tar.gz)
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- [unifont (16x8 or 16x16)](https://unifoundry.com/unifont.html)
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Documents related to the old version of the language engine:
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- [Marlin Fonts Documentation](https://www.marlinfw.org/docs/development/fonts.html)
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- [Marlin LCD Language](https://marlinfw.org/docs/development/lcd_language.html)
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- [U8GLIB](https://github.com/olikraus/u8glib.git)
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- [UTF-8 for U8GLIB](https://github.com/yhfudev/u8glib-fontutf8.git)
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- [Standalone test project for the Marlin UTF-8 language engine](https://github.com/yhfudev/marlin-fontutf8.git)
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