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2026 |
Oct. 13
  • emWin
  • News
Author:
Introduction to emWin, featuring new scalable vector fonts. Highlights include: scalable at runtime, low memory footprint, and fast, efficient rendering. The design includes an image of a silhouette and technology-themed background elements.

New scalable vector fonts for SEGGER emWin

SEGGER has added a new vector font format to emWin, its embedded graphics library for creating graphical user interfaces. The new format enables fonts to be scaled to any required size at runtime while keeping memory requirements low. Unlike bitmap fonts, a single vector font can be used at multiple sizes, eliminating the need to store separate font data for each pixel size.

The new vector fonts can be created with the emWin Font Converter and include only the characters required by the application. This can significantly reduce font size, particularly for large character sets. Fonts are available either as C files or as External Vector Font (XVF) files, with both formats optimized for fast lookup and low memory usage.

Fast and efficient rendering

A GPU is not required to use the new vector fonts. emWin includes a fast software renderer and can automatically use a compatible GPU or 2D graphics accelerator when available. An optional bitmap cache provides an additional performance boost by storing previously rendered characters for faster subsequent output.

Compared with FreeType, the new vector font implementation also has a significantly smaller footprint, requiring three to seven times less ROM for code and approximately four times less RAM, excluding the cache block. Additional features include integrated kerning, rotated text output, and an italicize function that eliminates the need for separate italic vector fonts.

More information about emWin is available here.