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SD Card Fonts

CrossPoint supports loading additional fonts from the SD card, including fonts with extended Unicode coverage (CJK, Cyrillic, Greek, etc.).

Installing Fonts

There are three ways to install fonts:

Option 1: Download from device (recommended)

  1. Connect your CrossPoint reader to Wi-Fi
  2. Go to Settings > System > Manage Fonts
  3. Browse available font families and tap to download
  4. Downloaded fonts appear immediately in Settings > Reader > Font Family

Option 2: Upload via web browser

  1. Start File Transfer and connect through Join Network or Create Hotspot
  2. Open the web interface URL shown on the reader
  3. Navigate to the Fonts tab
  4. Upload .cpfont files using the upload form

Option 3: Manual SD card copy

  1. Download font files from the crosspoint-fonts repository

  2. Copy font family folders to one of two locations on your SD card:

    • /.fonts/ — hidden directory (preferred; keeps the SD root tidy when mounted on a desktop)
    • /fonts/ — visible directory (use this if your OS hides dot-files and you'd rather see the folder in your file manager)

    Both roots are always scanned at boot and the results are merged: a family installed in /fonts/ shows up even when /.fonts/ also exists, and vice versa. The two roots only collide if the same family name appears in both — in that case the copy in /.fonts/ wins and the duplicate in /fonts/ is ignored.

    SD Card Root/
├── .fonts/                     ← Hidden root (preferred)
│   └── Literata/
│       ├── Literata_12.cpfont
│       ├── Literata_14.cpfont
│       ├── Literata_16.cpfont
│       └── Literata_18.cpfont
└── fonts/                      ← Visible root (equally valid)
    └── Merriweather/
        ├── Merriweather_12.cpfont
        └── ...

  3. Insert the SD card and power on your CrossPoint reader

CJK in the User Interface

The built-in UI fonts are Latin-only, so by default the interface (book titles in the library, file names in the browser, list rows, headers) shows replacement boxes for Chinese/Japanese/Korean text even when book content renders correctly with a selected SD-card font.

To avoid shipping a large CJK glyph set in flash, CrossPoint instead reuses the SD-card font you already selected: when a UI string contains a CJK character the built-in font cannot draw, that whole string is rendered with your selected SD-card font instead.

The fallback is size-matched. The built-in UI fonts render at 8 pt (small/author lines), 10 pt (list rows) and 12 pt (book-cover titles, headers), so CrossPoint loads your SD family at those sizes too and maps each UI font to its same-size SD font. CJK book names therefore appear at the same size as the Latin text around them. For this to work the family must contain .cpfont files at sizes 8, 10 and 12 (in addition to the reader sizes 12–18); any UI size missing from the family simply keeps showing boxes for CJK at that size.

Note that Settings > Reader > Font Size lists every size the family ships, so a family built at 8,10,12,14,16,18 offers all six as reading sizes — the UI sizes are not hidden from the list. Reading at 8 pt is your call; if you would rather not see the small sizes there, convert two families (one with the UI sizes for fallback, one with only the reading sizes you want).

When converting your own font, include the UI sizes:

python3 lib/EpdFont/scripts/fontconvert_sdcard.py \
  MyCJKFont-Regular.otf \
  --intervals cjk \
  --sizes 8,10,12,14,16,18 \
  --style regular \
  --name MyCJKFont \
  --output-dir ./MyCJKFont/

What this means in practice:

  • Select a CJK-capable SD font under Settings > Reader > Font Family (see Installing Fonts and the cjk / hangul presets under Converting Custom Fonts). That single selection drives both book content and size-matched CJK fallback in the UI.
  • Pure-Latin UI strings keep the crisp built-in font; only strings that actually contain CJK are routed to the SD font.
  • The fallback is per string, not per glyph: a mixed title such as 三体 Vol.1 renders entirely in the SD font (including the Latin part). If that SD font is a Mono family, the Latin portion will appear half/full width.
  • If no SD font is selected (a built-in reading font is active), there is no CJK fallback and the UI again shows boxes for CJK — pick a CJK SD font to restore it.

Available Pre-Built Fonts

The current list of pre-built fonts is maintained in the crosspoint-fonts repository.

Converting Custom Fonts

To convert your own TrueType/OpenType fonts:

Prerequisites

pip install freetype-py fonttools

Single font (one style)

python3 lib/EpdFont/scripts/fontconvert_sdcard.py \
  MyFont-Regular.ttf \
  --intervals latin-ext \
  --sizes 12,14,16,18 \
  --style regular \
  --name MyFont \
  --output-dir ./MyFont/

Multi-style font

python3 lib/EpdFont/scripts/fontconvert_sdcard.py \
  --regular MyFont-Regular.ttf \
  --bold MyFont-Bold.ttf \
  --italic MyFont-Italic.ttf \
  --bolditalic MyFont-BoldItalic.ttf \
  --intervals latin-ext \
  --sizes 12,14,16,18 \
  --name MyFont \
  --output-dir ./MyFont/

Available Unicode interval presets

Preset Coverage
ascii U+0020–U+007E (Basic Latin)
latin1 U+0080–U+00FF (Latin-1 Supplement)
latin-ext European languages (Latin + Extended-A/B + punctuation + ligatures)
greek Greek + Extended Greek
cyrillic Cyrillic + Supplement
hebrew Hebrew + Alphabetic Presentation Forms
georgian Georgian + Georgian Supplement
armenian Armenian
ethiopic Ethiopic + Extended
vietnamese Vietnamese subset (ơ/ư and combining marks)
ipa-chars IPA Extensions + Spacing Modifier Letters (phonetic transcription)
punctuation General punctuation (U+2000–U+206F)
cjk CJK Unified Ideographs + Hiragana + Katakana + Fullwidth
hangul Korean Hangul syllables + Jamo + Compatibility Jamo
cherokee Cherokee (historic + supplement block)
tifinagh Tifinagh
symbols Math, currency, arrows, box-drawing, misc symbols, dingbats
reading Literary fiction coverage: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, math/symbol blocks, supplemental punctuation, and CJK quote marks
builtin Matches the firmware's built-in font conversion intervals

Combine presets with commas: --intervals latin-ext,greek,cyrillic

You can also specify arbitrary Unicode ranges directly: --intervals latin-ext,(0x2100-0x214F)

To list all presets with codepoint counts:

python3 lib/EpdFont/scripts/fontconvert_sdcard.py --list-presets

Additional options

--force-autohint — force FreeType's auto-hinter instead of the font's native hinting (useful when a font's built-in hints produce poor results at small sizes).

Install custom fonts via the web interface or manual SD card copy.