Saturday, June 13, 2009

Uploading Lucida Grande to your iPhone

Preface: this would not be possible without Tukulesto's sparse tutorial. Recommended software: TouchTerm Lite and FontViewer on your iPhone.
Amazingly, Apple chose not to put OS X's signature font on their mobile platform. This can be corrected if you have a Mac handy and your iPhone is jailbroken.
For starters, have an sftp client on your Mac (Cyberduck is good). Log in and navigate to /System/Library/Fonts. There should be two things in it: CGFontCache.plist and the Cache directory (where the fonts actually live). Since 10.4, OS X has stored its property list files in binary rather than XML format: this can be converted using the plutil command line utility. The astute among you will notice that the OS on the iPhone itself has a plutil utility, but beware: the converters were stripped out by Apple.
The basic procedure is as follows: sftp into your iPhone, drag the fonts you want added into the Cache folder, then convert-edit-convert the CGFontCache property list to add the font's metadata, then shutdown/restart your iPhone to make the change take effect.
Why would you bother doing this? In my case, I wanted to see the Apple website rendered more faithfully, and to add more diversity of sans-serif fonts to Stanza's ebook reader (many of the defaults are derivatives of the same Grotesk gothic family). It's also good practice for hacking your iPhone.


-- Post From My iPod touch

The 21st century inflight

I generally avoid flying since the TSA decided an insulin pump was grounds for unpacking all my luggage, but I really like my in-laws and they live across the country in North Carolina (not too far from where Ruth and I used to live before we moved to Arizona).
We've both got 8Gb iPod Touches and we planned to keep ours stocked with entertainment media for the long drives and flights. Archive.org is a good source of public domain MP4 content including vintage cartoons. Ruth found smoking deals on some childrens' classics in audiobook format as well as the large free assortment from vox libris. Stanza connects to the Gutenberg Project where much is there to be downloaded.
Aboard our flight, I was surprised how many laptops, netbooks and iPods popped out.


-- Post From My iPod touch