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Does iOS support bitmap font in any form to use in UIKit classes?

eonil
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As of iOS 3.2, you can add any font you like to the list that UIKit will accept via the UIAppFonts info.plist key. It doesn't support any bitmap file types directly, but you can convert a bitmap font to a TTF using methods such as this one — which involves using an open source piece of software called FontForge along with a bitmap font tracer called autotrace to create (with some manual assistance) a vector description of the bitmap font.

Other answers to that same StackOverflow question report some success with populating a TTF directly with bitmap data. Your mileage may vary.

Community
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Tommy
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  • Thanks for answer. My main reason was size. I'm making Korean app and average size of Korean vector fonts are 2MB. Seriously, not considerable... I decided to figure out other way. – eonil Apr 28 '11 at 15:16
  • I'm unable to find a definitive reference, but it seems you can use either TTF or OTF — the latter may be smaller because you can use a higher order type of curve that often reduces the amount of description you have to store, but I wouldn't expect it'll shrink you to the size of a bitmap font for a language with an alphabet as complicated as Korean. Sorry I couldn't be more help. – Tommy Apr 28 '11 at 15:20