SD Card Fonts

CrossInk 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

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

Note: To change the font sizes that are downloaded, change the option for Download Font Size Range before downloading.

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 (Fastest)

1. Download font files from the CrossInk Fonts repository.

   • Click the .zip file for the font you want then click on the download icon to download the raw file.

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 CrossInk device

Dictionary Fonts

EPUB books can use a different installed SD-card family for dictionary definitions. This can be set globally or per-book via Font Options. If a saved point size is no longer available, CrossInk chooses the closest file from the dictionary family. If the device experiences low available RAM, you may see the dictionary font fall back to your reader font. This is normal.

Generating dictionary font families

Use the dictionary-specific builder to generate the complete family catalog with the extra coverage used by dictionary definitions:

python3 -m pip install -r lib/EpdFont/scripts/requirements.txt
python3 lib/EpdFont/scripts/build-dictionary-fonts.py \
  --output-dir ./generated-dictionary-fonts \
  --clean \
  --jobs 2

The dictionary build includes the reading ranges and the built-in ranges, plus IPA and phonetic-extension characters (U+0250–U+02FF and U+1D00–U+1DBF) and combining-mark ranges (U+1DC0–U+1DFF, U+20D0–U+20FF, and U+FE20–U+FE2F).

The default output is ../crossink-fonts/dictionary-fonts. Use a separate --output-dir for personal builds, because --clean removes the selected output directory before generating the fonts. The output contains family folders and ZIP archives; copy a family folder or unzip its archive into /.fonts/ or /fonts/ on the SD card. Use --only FamilyA,FamilyB to generate selected families.

Available Pre-Built Fonts

You can view pre-built fonts available for download at Inky.

Converting Custom Fonts with CrossPoint’s Font Builder

To convert your own TrueType/OpenType fonts use CrossPoint’s Font Builder

Converting Custom Fonts with Python

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

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.