Change your Palm Font into Something Better!

One thing about Palm OS that bothers me is the huge font it has got. It really eats out a lot of space that could’ve been utilized in a much better way. This is a simple tutorial of how to install better/smaller fonts that would change the whole experience for you.

You’ll need 3 things:

1. YAHM (Yet Another Hack Manager) — you need it to run FontHackV.
2. FontHackV (for OS 5) — to set up the fonts. [FontHack for Palm OS 4 and below]
3. Fonts! — I’ve included Arial 10pt, Arial 10pt bold, Arial Narrow 11pt, Handera 22pt Thick Bold.
   
4. Quick Font Make — easily make your custom fonts from your Windows Fonts on your PC — optional.

Download all these in a RAR file from here (scroll down, then click FREE). You need WinRAR to extract the files.

Once you download and extract them, hotsync the files (except Quick Font Make) to your device. Then open YAHM, tick beside FontHackV, and tap the + icon. Tap New or All Applications, then Edit. You can choose single application if you want (like a text application). You’ll then be presented by the view below:

Tap Standard, then tap Font. Choose the font you want. You’ll find Arial Narrow there since you hotsync’d it. Repeat for Bold. You should – by default – untick Slow Mode.

About the fonts:
I’ve tested a lot of fonts, but only 2 or three worked perfectly, and didn’t cause any incompatibilities. I’ve even tried using more than one font in the same application. Examples below:

This is Tasks application. The first snapshot shows the default font. See how BIG it is? The snapshot on the bottom shows the font combo I use (Handera 22pt Thick Bold, and Arial Narrow 11pt). This is the most successful one that I’ve managed to come up with. You can easily get 3 more text lines.

These are Stedman’s Medical Dictionary snapshots. Compare! See… you could view the whole article in one page with the second font (Arial 10pt)

The Favorites application. In FontHackV, you can change fonts for each application indepenedtly of other ones. Here I’ve used Handera 22pt Thick Bold instead of that large font.

You can experiment with Quick Make Font (enclosed in the rar file). But I don’t recommend using dense or funky fonts. Won’t look nice on the Palm. Try standard fonts like Arial, Tahoma, Verdana,…etc

Try it. It’s is gonna be fun!