garmin-roman-time

Garmin Roman Time

A minimalist, elegant, nerdy Garmin watch face that displays the current time as Roman numerals.

Available for installation from Garmin Connect IQ Developer portal or through the Connect IQ mobile app.

Note
Roman Time is part of a collection of unconventional Garmin watch faces. It has been developed for fun, as a proof of concept, and as a learning experience. It is shared as is as an open source project, with no commitment to long term maintenance and further feature development.

Please use issues to provide bug reports or feature requests.
Please use discussions for any other comments.

All feedback is wholeheartedly welcome.

Contents

• Roman numerals
• Features
• Fonts
• Build, test, deploy

Roman numerals

The Garmin Roman Time watch face shows hours and minutes as Roman numerals, for the fun of it and for an educational value.

To display hours (0-23) and minutes (0-59), the following Roman digits are used:

Value	Digit
0	N
1	I
5	V
10	X
50	L

Roman numerals are formed by adding the values of all digits forming a numeral, with the exception of numerals forming a subtractive notation:

Value	Digits
4	IV
9	IX
40	XL

Thus, 23:59 is XXIII LIX, and 9:44 is IX XLIV.

The watch face shows time as:

• either hours minutes in one line;
• or hours over minutes, in two lines.

Note

• The mode can be selected in the app settings, at any time (pun intended), on the watch.
• Due to the size of Roman numerals, the font size in single line mode has tighter limits than in two-line mode. Otherwise, the time would at times (pun intended) extend past the boundaries of the watch face. In particular, XXIV XXXVIII is the longest pair of numeral to be displayed, and it dictates the limit on font size for the single-line mode.

Features

The Roman Time watch face supports the following features:

Screenshot	Description
	Single line Roman time The current time is displayed as a single line of Roman numerals in two groups: hour, in bold, white font, and minutes, in light, white font.
	Double line Roman time The current time is displayed as two lines of Roman numerals. The layout can be changed by the user with a Customize menu setting on the device.

Fonts

The Roman Time watch face uses custom fonts:

• Asap Condensed for hours (bold) and minutes (light).

The development of Garmin watch faces motivated the implementation of two useful tools:

• A TTF to FNT+PNG converter (ttf2bmp).
  Garmin watches use non-scalable fixed-size bitmap fonts, and cannot handle variable size True Type fonts directly.
• An font scaler automation tool (garmin-font-scaler).
  Garmin watches come in a variety of shapes and resolutions, and bitmap fonts need to be scaled for each device proportionally to its resolution.

The font development proceeded as follows:

• The fonts were downloaded from Google Fonts as True Type (.ttf) fonts.
• The fonts were converted to bitmaps as .fnt and .png pairs using the open source command-line ttf2bmp converter.
• The font sizes were established to match the Garmin Fenix 7X Solar watch 280x280 pixel screen resolution.
• The fonts were then scaled proportionally to match other screen sizes available on Garmin watches using the garmin-font-scaler tool.

The table below lists all font sizes provided for the supported screen resolutions.

Resolution	Shape	Element	Font	Size
148 x 205	rectangle	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	42
148 x 205	rectangle	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	42
148 x 205	rectangle	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	32
148 x 205	rectangle	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	32
176 x 176	semi-octagon	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	50
176 x 176	semi-octagon	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	50
176 x 176	semi-octagon	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	38
176 x 176	semi-octagon	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	38
215 x 180	semi-round	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	51
215 x 180	semi-round	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	51
215 x 180	semi-round	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	39
215 x 180	semi-round	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	39
218 x 218	round	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	62
218 x 218	round	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	62
218 x 218	round	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	47
218 x 218	round	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	47
240 x 240	round	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	69
240 x 240	rectangle	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	69
240 x 240	round	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	69
240 x 240	rectangle	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	69
240 x 240	round	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	51
240 x 240	rectangle	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	51
240 x 240	round	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	51
240 x 240	rectangle	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	51
260 x 260	round	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	74
260 x 260	round	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	74
260 x 260	round	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	56
260 x 260	round	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	56
280 x 280	round	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	80
280 x 280	round	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	80
280 x 280	round	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	60
280 x 280	round	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	60
320 x 360	rectangle	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	91
320 x 360	rectangle	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	91
320 x 360	rectangle	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	69
320 x 360	rectangle	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	69
360 x 360	round	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	103
360 x 360	round	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	103
360 x 360	round	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	77
360 x 360	round	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	77
390 x 390	round	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	111
390 x 390	round	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	111
390 x 390	round	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	84
390 x 390	round	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	84
416 x 416	round	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	119
416 x 416	round	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	119
416 x 416	round	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	89
416 x 416	round	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	89
454 x 454	round	Double line hour	AsapCondensed bold	130
454 x 454	round	Double line minutes	AsapCondensed light	130
454 x 454	round	Single line hour	AsapCondensed bold	97
454 x 454	round	Single line minutes	AsapCondensed light	97

Build, test, deploy

To modify and build the sources, you need to have installed:

• Visual Studio Code with Monkey C extension.
• Garmin Connect IQ SDK.

Consult Monkey C Visual Studio Code Extension for how to execute commands such as build and test to the Monkey C runtime.

You can use the included Makefile to conveniently trigger some of the actions from the command line.

# build binaries from sources
make build

# run unit tests -- note: requires the simulator to be running
make test

# run the simulation 
make run

# clean up the project directory
make clean

To sideload your application to your Garmin watch, see developer.garmin.com/connect-iq/connect-iq-basics/your-first-app.

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