[Epic 4G Android Development] ritalin:
Create custom FlipFont files with font preview and icon.

*At present this only works on Galaxy S phones, but should work if FlipFont is ported or released on other devices*

Why do we need to jump through hoops?

It seems that the fonts in the MonoType apks on the market are digitally signed. This is what is preventing the use of any old font being added to an APK. I believe the FlipFont app is looking for the digital signature in the font within the APK. If its not there, it does not use the font and reverts to using the default font. It MAY be possible to edit the FlipFont APK so that it no longer looks for the digital signature. This should allow us to use any font without jumping through hoops.

If you can find the FlipFont Apk please post its location or better yet PM me with its location. If your really feeling spunky ADB pull the file off your phone and post it here, so we can take a look at it.

Lets trick FlipFont. Heres what you need.

Apk Manager 4.8 found here. This will allow you to decompile and edit the APK attached at the bottom of this link. Dont worry its much easier then it sounds.

FontCreator 30 day trial found here. This is a windows only program. If you know of a cross platform, open source or FREE font editor please let me know. The one on source forge is not stable enough for use at present and its install needs its own walk through.

***Link for FontCreator has been downgraded to version 5, which will allow you to save fonts during the 30 day trial, unlike version 6. Thanks sigeltek***

Photoshop or Gimp. Note you only need this if you want to edit the icon file for the app. I will not go over editing the icon in the walk-through, this should be pretty self explanatory.

Digitally Signed Monoglyceride font found here For some reason Mediafire sees this as a jpg file. Click the download this image button in the link and you will see its actually a .ttf file. ODD :ºp

The Monoglyceride APK attached at the bottom of this link.

Walk-through editing the Monoglyceride font with FontCreator.

Open the Monoglyceride.ttf font with FontCreator

Open the .ttf font you want to use.

Make note of the number of Glyphs at the bottom right side of FontCreator when you have your font selected.

Click the Monoglyceride font window in FontCreator and choose edit>select all at the top of the program.

Hit delete on your keyboard. This should delete everything in the Monoglyceride window.

click Insert>Glyphs... at the top of the program

type in the number of glyphs your font has in it and hit ok. You should now see a bunch of empty glyphs in the Monoglyceride window.

Now switch back to your font and again hit edit>select all

Hit edit>copy

Swith back to the Monoglyceride window and click edit>select all... and then edit>paste special...

This will open up the Paste Special window. Put a check in every box in Item section and choose "Add Mappings" in the mappings section and then click OK.

If this worked properly you should see all of the characters and mappings from your font in the Monoglyceride.ttf window.

Close your fonts window in FontCreator

Click File>Save as, rename the Monoglyceride.ttf with the name of your font.

Thats it you now have a digitally signed font. If you want to double check, open the new font in windows and you should see that the font is still technicaly the Bauhaus font, but it now contains your fonts characters. :º)

*** eweo911 has just informed me of a quick way to resize the font if it is too large. You can check to see if its too big by double clicking on one of the glyphs after preforming the Paste Special section of the instructions above. Its best to choose one of the uppercase letters. If the glyphs image goes above the guide shown for cap it WILL be a large font on the phone. These guides are set in the perfect position for our phones screen.

Here is the quote from eweo911:

Walk-through editing the apk with Apk Manager 4.8

Download the monoglyceride.apk listed below.

Copy the apk into place-apk-here-for-modding folder in the Apk_Manager_4.8 directory.

Run script.bat and choose option 9

Open Apk_Manager_4.8\out\assets\fonts in explorer

Replace existing monoglyceride.apk font with the .ttf font you edited in FontCreator

edit all XML, yml and smali files to include the font name or font.ttf depending on the entry in the original file. Just replace monoglyceride in these files and folder with the name of your font. Pay attention to capitalization in the existing files, and make sure to do the same when replacing with your file name.

Edit the last folder name in the smali folder tree from monoglyceride to the name of your font

Edit the icon.png in the drawable folder with one of your own.

Compile apk - option 11

Sign apk option 12

Check the Apk_Manager_4.8\place-apk-here-for-modding folder and you should see repackaged-signed.apk along with the original monoglyceride apk. Rename your new signed.apk file the same as the monoglyceride one and just check the name at the end with your font name. This is not REALLY necessary, but do it for consistency sake.

install apk on your phone

This might take you about 30 minutes the first time you run through it, but after you get accustom to the steps you should be able to bang through it in about 10 minutes.

Well here you go, here is my first custom FlipFont APK.

Monoglyceride

http://www.mediafire.com/file/b63fa44f7ks7e3d/com.monotype.android.font.monoglyceride.apk

Its working perfectly for me, but let me know if you have any issues.

If you create a font with these instructions, please share it with the community. There is a thread in the Vibrant theme section found here.

Save this thread as a favorite or subcribed thread and you can easily view it and download the fonts in the XDA tapatalk app on your phone.

You will need Astro or Linda file browser to be able to download the fonts from your phone.