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KazFont - free programmer font for Windows

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3. Debugging help

There are different font requirements for source code editor and debug window, for example we usually set smaller fonts in debug window.

If you trace simple strings from the program, then normal font will suffice. But if you work with raw data from serial port, socket or device, you probably want to see exact values of the bytes.

KazFont has two solutions for this requirement.

3a. Hex font

Instead of the characters, you see hexadecimal values. All code positions are filled, so full 256 character range is visible. You can change any text editor to a hex viewer, even common Notepad in Windows.

Control characters below 0x20 can be sometimes improperly displayed by the text editor, especially 0x00, 0x09, 0x0A and 0x0D.

Binary 8 Binary 9 Binary 10 Binary 12 Binary 13

3b. UTF8 font

It also displays character values below 0x20, but shows real characters in the range of 0x20 - 0x7E. The space character is marked so it is not an empty space.

The font displays byte values, so why is the name UTF8 ?
UTF8 encoding have strict rules. If the character occupy one byte, its value is below 0x7F.
When Unicode character needs to be encoded in two or more bytes, the value of first byte in the pack is always greater than or equal 0xC0.

KazFont UTF8 has character images of these values (≥ 0xC0) shifted right by one pixel, so you can easy observe when multibyte Unicode character starts, as in the samples below. Exact view of the text depends on text editor logic.

UTF-8 8 UTF-8 9 UTF-8 10 UTF-8 12 UTF-8 13

Samples:

Original text encoded in CP1250 and saved as UTF-8:
UTF-8 Sample Original

The same file viewed as ASCII in Western encoding:
UTF-8 Sample Western

The same file viewed using KazFont UTF8 in different font sizes, the UTF-8 pairs can be easily noticed:

UTF-8 Sample 8

UTF-8 Sample 9

UTF-8 Sample 10

UTF-8 Sample 12

UTF-8 Sample 13

Bytes EF BB BF marks text as UTF-8.



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