nanogui: microwindows fonts
Subject:
Re: microwindows fonts
From:
bsittler ####@####.####
Date:
28 Jun 1999 21:58:46 -0000
Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9906281530130.838-100000@ladron.cs.nmt.edu>
On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Greg Haerr wrote:
> I'm trying to get some more non-copyrighted fonts for micro-windows
> use. I've found a good rom alternative, vga.pcf, which is part of the
> dosemu distribution.
> Does anyone know how to convert .pcf files to, say bdf?
> I've found bdftopcf, but I only know how to convert bdf files to micro-windows
> currently.
I dunno about pcf -> bdf conversion, but if you'd like to use the wealth
of Linux Console fonts out there, I've written a PSF/ROM font image -> BDF
converter. It's at http://www.nmt.edu/~bsittler/convfont/convfont.c, and
it's in the public domain.
It only handles fonts which are 8 pixels wide, but since that includes
most Linux Console fonts, it shouldn't be a problem.
As for non-copyrighted fonts, although I am not a lawyer, I believe that
bitmap fonts (as opposed to scalable fonts) are considered typefaces in
the USA, and are therefore considered non-copyrightable. With this in
mind, I have dumped the font ROMs of several old computers, and placed
some of them online. The font from the Kaypro 2x (which is only good for
ASCII, not ISO-8859-1,) has been converted to BDF and is available at
http://www.nmt.edu/~bsittler/kaypro2x.bdf. It is an 8x16-pixel font with
ASCII, line-drawing, and block-graphics characters. The computer it was
created for, the Kaypro 2x, has been out of production for well over a
decade, and the company which made it is long gone.
If you're interested, I can also convert some of my larger 16x32-pixel
fonts to BDF format. The include only the ASCII printable characters at
the moment, and are in rather showy faces (that is, not very readable,)
but they work okay for headings and other "occasional" text. Two of them
are online in GIF format at http://www.nmt.edu/~bsittler/images/gamma.gif
and http://www.nmt.edu/~bsittler/images/nu.gif. The first (gamma) includes
grayscales, but can easily be converted to straight monochrome. The second
(nu) is similar to the Fraktur typeface, which some people claim is
unreadable.
I am also willing to draw new typefaces to order, given general guidelines
on how they should look. I prefer fixed-width typefaces to variable-width,
simply because the program I draw my fonts for (a video game in
development) can't use variable-width typefaces for reasons of efficiency
(it would require harder math before each screen redraw if the character
cells weren't exactly half the size of the graphics cells.)
If you're interested in fonts for a non-unity aspect ratio (i.e. for CGA
or EGA resolutions,) I have drawn several fonts on an 8x9-pixel grid which
I can automatically convert to BDF format. Does this interest you? Once
again, they include only ASCII (and a few line-drawing characters.)
