Fixing Roboto, Somewhat

noll5326 · Sep 16, 2013

I saw a post earlier on G+ about the G2 and Roboto. Basically you can only use normal and bold; italic, bold italic, Roboto Light, Roboto Thin, and Roboto Condensed don't work. The weight also appears to be off.

I did some looking around and all the fonts are present on the system. I made a quick test app to compare the fonts on the G2 and Galaxy Nexus and set to figure out how to fix it.

It's pretty simple, just copy the system_fonts.xml file in the zip to \system\etc. You'll probably want to backup and/or rename the existing file first and give it the same file permissions. You'll need root and a file explorer that can mount system. Reboot and you should be able to see the changes.

I copied the file over to internal storage and used Total Commander to copy the xml file after renaming the original file.

The weight is still wrong but at least if the developer wanted to use Roboto and italics, you'll now be able to see italics.

canecbr600 · Sep 16, 2013

If rooted, u can use jrummys font app, and install any font the app has, it replaces the roboto font in stock font settings....

Sent from my LG-D800 using XDA Premium HD app

d.cortez · Sep 17, 2013

@noll5326, thanks for sharing. I'm a fan of the 4.2 bold font hours/light font minutes clock and your tweak fixed this issue on my G2.

sent from my GN2 / GS4

sefnap · Sep 27, 2013

If you want to fix the weight issues, you can download Roboto directly from Google. Just click "Download Roboto" and extract the zip, then copy to your phone. In adb you can do this:

Assuming you put the roboto files at /sdcard/roboto

Code:

su
mount -o remount,rw /system
cp /sdcard/roboto/*.ttf /system/fonts

This will overwrite the ones from the stock rom, so if you're concerned about that, you can make a backup first:

Code:

mkdir /sdcard/roboto-stock
cp /system/fonts/Roboto* /sdcard/roboto-stock

After that and using your modded system_fonts.xml, I have nice proper typography in the Play Store and other Holo apps.

Thanks!

WheresTrent · Sep 27, 2013

Thanks for posting this, this was (oddly?) one of my bigger concerns in researching this phone. Will give it a try when I get it.

slider112 · Nov 24, 2013

noll5326 said:
I saw a post earlier on G+ about the G2 and Roboto. Basically you can only use normal and bold; italic, bold italic, Roboto Light, Roboto Thin, and Roboto Condensed don't work. The weight also appears to be off.

I did some looking around and all the fonts are present on the system. I made a quick test app to compare the fonts on the G2 and Galaxy Nexus and set to figure out how to fix it.

It's pretty simple, just copy the system_fonts.xml file in the zip to \system\etc. You'll probably want to backup and/or rename the existing file first and give it the same file permissions. You'll need root and a file explorer that can mount system. Reboot and you should be able to see the changes.

I copied the file over to internal storage and used Total Commander to copy the xml file after renaming the original file.

The weight is still wrong but at least if the developer wanted to use Roboto and italics, you'll now be able to see italics.

sefnap said:
If you want to fix the weight issues, you can download Roboto directly from Google. Just click "Download Roboto" and extract the zip, then copy to your phone. In adb you can do this:

Assuming you put the roboto files at /sdcard/roboto

Code:

su mount -o remount,rw /system cp /sdcard/roboto/*.ttf /system/fonts

This will overwrite the ones from the stock rom, so if you're concerned about that, you can make a backup first:

Code:

mkdir /sdcard/roboto-stock cp /system/fonts/Roboto* /sdcard/roboto-stock

After that and using your modded system_fonts.xml, I have nice proper typography in the Play Store and other Holo apps.

Thanks!

Thanks for this guys, much appreciated. I combined both of these procedures and now have all stock android roboto system fonts that render perfectly everywhere, most notably in the play store. FYI: I ended up just using root explorer to move both the xml file as well as all of the stock font files to the proper directories, changed permissions and rebooted. Good as gold :good:

robogo1982 · Nov 24, 2013

Followed the instructions and now everything looks as it's supposed to!

DashClock now looks great.

tarkil · Nov 25, 2013

Much appreciated indeed !! Thanks vm.

revolt1 · Nov 26, 2013

can someone make a zip
thanks in advance

robogo1982 · Nov 26, 2013

Um... is pasting a couple of files really that big of a problem?

I reckon it can be made, yes... I might just give it a go.

EDIT: okay, here it is.

NOTE: I have not tested this and I don't know whether it works properly! I am not responsible if you mess up your system or your phone. Do a nandroid backup first!

Download from attachment or this link.

garywojdan81 · Nov 27, 2013

Thanks, this works great?

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

revolt1 · Dec 3, 2013

robogo1982 said:
Um... is pasting a couple of files really that big of a problem?

I reckon it can be made, yes... I might just give it a go.

EDIT: okay, here it is.

NOTE: I have not tested this and I don't know whether it works properly! I am not responsible if you mess up your system or your phone. Do a nandroid backup first!

Download from attachment or this link.

didn't work for me really want this to work

robogo1982 · Dec 3, 2013

Do it manually, then.

Sevael · Dec 3, 2013

I've tried it manually and it just screws up certain screens. On the password entry when making a purchase in Play Store, you only see a corner of a huge letter where it tells you to enter your password and you can't see what you're typing at all. The Tasker app is really affected, with the preferences window being a complete disaster; the fonts are massive and spread out like crazy even though my phone is set to the smallest font size. There are several other places here and there where it really messes up too.

When it works, it looks great. But for the odd screen that it screws up, it's just not worth it. I'm glad I backed up the stock files first.

Yes, I put the xml file in /system/etc/ and downloaded the fonts from Google and put them in /system/fonts/. I changed all the file permissions. I rebooted and could see the font changes, but in some places the font was just way too large and the spacing between lines was huge. Perhaps the modified xml file still needs more tweaking.

mannequin · Dec 3, 2013

Sevael said:
I've tried it manually and it just screws up certain screens. On the password entry when making a purchase in Play Store, you only see a corner of a huge letter where it tells you to enter your password and you can't see what you're typing at all...

can confirm all that was said above. there are small graphical glitches here and there too, like in gmail upon selection half of the bar up top gets colored blue, etc.

edit: just restored the backup and noticed gmail still does it, perhaps it's not font related and i just haven't noticed that before but it's definitely shouldn't be there.

http://i.imgur.com/mE7EnLW.png

apparently other phones (like HTC One) suffer from this bug too. does anybody know what causes this?

robogo1982 · Dec 3, 2013

Try switching to another font and then back to Roboto. I had to do that to make it fully operational. But yeah, in a few places there are minor glitches and inconsistencies.

robogo1982 · Dec 10, 2013

Anyone using this mod experiencing soft reboots?

jaybird163 · Dec 10, 2013

No reboots... Worked flawlessly for me

Sent from my LG-VS980 using XDA Premium HD app

mannequin · Dec 16, 2013

after playing around with different fonts i think i found a combination that works perfectly on our phones:

- download "stock Roboto fonts from the 4.3 base ROM" from here. strangely enough, i think those are stock HTC One fonts.

(original thread it was pulled from where you can find tons of fonts, mind you most of them wouldn't work correctly:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=45437057

the easiest way to check if the font is "working" properly is going to the Call logs screen and check the date stamp as it appears broken with some. thanks alex72 for the thread tip!)

- use "system_fonts.xml" from this thread

and done. light, condensed, bold, italic, everything seems to be working and without the issues in the usual places.

avidmovies · Dec 16, 2013

Fixing font without rooting

The above method worked perfectly. I did not want to actually root my phone and trip any root checkers, so I accomplished everything via a temporary root adb shell (IOroot ftw!).

The following was done on a stock AT&T D800 with OTA (D80010o).
Make sure to switch to another font in Display settings before attempting this.

Get root adb access. IOroot should be able to help you out with that. Make sure to end the batch script at the point it warns you, so as not to push SU and trip anything.

Make backups.

Code:

adb pull /system/etc/system_fonts.xml
adb pull /system/fonts

Move these someplace safe, just in case.

Unzip RobotoFont_G2.zip to directory with adb (repackaged using xml from first post, and Roboto font from HTC One 4.3 base ROM - mannequin's post)

Push new files

Code:

adb shell mount -o remount,rw /system
adb push system_fonts.xml /system/etc/system_fonts.xml
adb push ./fonts /system/fonts

Fix permissions and reboot

Code:

adb shell
cd /system/etc
chmod 644 system_fonts.xml
cd ..
cd fonts
chmod 644 *
exit
adb reboot

Fixing Roboto, Somewhat

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