Homebrew Using the 3DS system font in homebrew?

flarn2006 · Oct 4, 2015

I think it would be nice if I could display text in a homebrew application using the 3DS's built-in system font. You know, the one that you see in the home menu, and all the system software. That way I could make it actually look like an official 3DS application, and also make use of the various system icons in the Unicode private use area (such as icons for the buttons on the system.) Since many games use this font as well, I'm guessing there's a way to have the OS render text from a system-wide copy of the font--that way I wouldn't have to get a license to distribute the font with my program, in which case I might as well just use a different font with a free license.

I do have a copy of the official SDK that got leaked a while ago, and that seems to support my theory that it's possible to just load the font from the OS, as one of the examples that displays text in that particular font refers to it as a "shared font".

So what I'm asking is does anyone know of a way to use this functionality from homebrew without having to link with Nintendo's official libnn library?

Jwiz33 · Oct 4, 2015

Isn't this the 3DS font? http://fontworks.co.jp/font/classic/rodin/DB.html

flarn2006 · Oct 5, 2015

Jwiz33 said:
Isn't this the 3DS font? http://fontworks.co.jp/font/classic/rodin/DB.html

I believe so, but there's a few issues:

I doubt that font is free. I did find a copy someone posted somewhere, but still I don't think I'd be allowed to distribute it with a homebrew app unless I paid a royalty. I'll still post the link though if a moderator says it's okay.
The version that's installed in the 3DS OS also contains several glyphs specific to the 3DS (and other Nintendo consoles too, interestingly.) Even if I bought that font and got the proper license to distribute it (which really wouldn't be worth it for a homebrew app) I doubt the version I get will have those.
If it's already built into the operating system, I'd rather not inflate the file size by including a separate copy.

If I use the version built into the operating system, I won't need to get a license to redistribute it, I'll be able to use those glyphs, and I won't need to inflate the file size by including it as a separate file.

keanutah · Oct 5, 2015

Definitely curious about this, would be really nice to use the built in official font.

daxtsu · Oct 5, 2015

flarn2006 said:
I think it would be nice if I could display text in a homebrew application using the 3DS's built-in system font. You know, the one that you see in the home menu, and all the system software. That way I could make it actually look like an official 3DS application, and also make use of the various system icons in the Unicode private use area (such as icons for the buttons on the system.) Since many games use this font as well, I'm guessing there's a way to have the OS render text from a system-wide copy of the font--that way I wouldn't have to get a license to distribute the font with my program, in which case I might as well just use a different font with a free license.

I do have a copy of the official SDK that got leaked a while ago, and that seems to support my theory that it's possible to just load the font from the OS, as one of the examples that displays text in that particular font refers to it as a "shared font".

So what I'm asking is does anyone know of a way to use this functionality from homebrew without having to link with Nintendo's official libnn library?

On 3DBrew, this is what I found: http://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/System_Font

Processes can get the sharedmem_handle+vaddr for mapping the sharedmem for this via APT:GetSharedFont.

You'd probably have to draw it manually at this point.

daxtsu · Jan 20, 2016

Sorry for the double post, but I wasn't sure if you saw this, @flarn2006: https://github.com/devkitPro/3ds-examples/blob/master/graphics/printing/system-font/source/main.c

The system font was finally reversed.

flarn2006 · Jan 21, 2016

daxtsu said:
Sorry for the double post, but I wasn't sure if you saw this, @flarn2006: https://github.com/devkitPro/3ds-examples/blob/master/graphics/printing/system-font/source/main.c

The system font was finally reversed.

Oh cool, thanks for telling me! It looks kind of complicated; I'll see what adding it to my graphing calculator app would involve. Do you know what the license for the devkitPro examples is? I'd like to be able to just copy the functions from the example that handle the technical aspects of drawing text. I'm almost positive it's allowed, but I'd like to know what the rules are.

Homebrew Using the 3DS system font in homebrew?

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