Commands¶

-blankfnt

-canvas xsize ysize

-clearmap

-crop xpos ypos width height

-fliph

-flipv

-invert

-lge

-lgeu

-lgeuf

-loadbdf ff.bdf

-loadclt directory/

-loadfnt mu.fnt

-loadhex unicode.hex

-loadmap cp437AB.uni

-loadpsf ter-v32b.psfu

-move shiftx shifty

-savebdf out.bdf

-saveclt outdir/

-savefnt x.fnt

-saven1 new.sfd

-saven2 new.sfd

-savepbm outdir/

-savepsf new.psfu

-savesfd new.sfd

-setbold

-setname name

-setprop key value

-upscale xscale yscale

-xcpi ega437.cpi outdir/

-xlat xoffset yoffset

blankfnt¶

Initializes the memory buffer with 256 empty 8x16 glyphs. The primary purpose for this is with saveclt to get blank glyph files for hand-editing. For a differently-sized canvas, combine with -crop or -canvas.

canvas¶

Enlarges the glyph box to the specified size. (It never shrinks it.)

clearmap¶

Discards the in-memory glyph index <-> Unicode mapping table.

crop¶

Removes an outer area from the glyph images, shrinking the image in the process.

fliph, flipv¶

Mirrors/flips glyphs.

lge¶

Applies a "Line Graphics Enable" transformation on glyphs. It copies the pixels in the second rightmost column to the rightmost column, and does this for glyph indices 0xC0 to 0xDF. In other words, the usefulness of the -lge command is more or less limited to DOS fonts which have graphic characters in exactly those indices.

lgeu¶

Applies LGE on the graphic glyphs that are in cp437 and other DOS codepages. It does this for unicode codepoints rather than glyph indices. This is suitable for all kinds of font formats, but do make sure a Unicode table is present. (BDF and PSF come with a table, .fnt does not, so use -loadmap before -lgeu).

lgeuf¶

Applies LGE on all glyphs from U+2500 thru U+25FF (Unicode "box drawing" and "box elements" classes), with special handling for the shades at U+2591 thru U+2593. This is provided as an alternative to the "true DOS look" that lge/lgeu would make.

loadbdf¶

Reads a BDF (Adobe Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format) font file.

loadclt¶

Reads a directory full of CLT files containing glyphs. CLT is a textgraphical format to facilitate visual editing with a text console editor.

loadfnt¶

Reads a headerless bitmap font file, as typically used for CGA/EGA/VGA/MDA hardware, from the specified file into memory. 8x8x256 (width/height/glyphs), 8x12x256, 8x14x256, 8x16x256 and 8x16x512 are supported.

loadfnth¶

Reads a headerless bitmap font file, using the specified height N and width 8. The number of characters is then autoderived from the filesize.

loadhex¶

Reads a Unifont .hex encoded file.

loadmap¶

Reads a glyphindex <-> Unicode codepoint mapping table from the given file into memory. The format follows the maps from /usr/share/kbd/unimaps, that is, "0x00 U+0000" at its simplest. Multiple U+ codepoints can be specified in a line. -loadmap does not clear the mapping table, which makes it possible to cumulate mappings from multiple files.

loadpsf¶

Reads a PC Screen Font PSF 2 version 0. If the psf file comes with a mapping table, the current in-memory table will be discarded and replaced with the one from the PSF.

move¶

Shift all glyphs by the given x/y offsets within their existing glyph box (possibly truncating them).

savebdf¶

Saves the font to a Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format file (BDF). This type of file can be processed further by other tools such as bdftopcf(1) or fontforge(1) to, for example, turn them into Portable Compiled Format (PCF) or TrueType/OpenType (TTF/OTF) files. (See the "Examples" section.)

saveclt¶

Saves the current in-memory glyphs as multiple CLT files to the given directory. CLT is a textgraphical format to facilitate visual editing with a text console editor.

savefnt¶

Saves the current in-memory glyphs to the given file, using the headerless format.

savemap¶

Saves the current in-memory Unicode mapping table to the given file.

saven1¶

N1 was an experiment to try and model the "diagonalization idea" (cf. -saven2) by analyzing the original glyph bitmap. Its defining characteristic is a lookaround window of 3x3 pixels, whose contents are mapped to a set of triangles. N1 has some drawbacks over the newer N2:

• N1 adds diagonals on single-pixel protrusions (e.g. the left end of the horizontal bar in an 'f' in certain fonts). This is definitely not fixable with a 3x3 window and would require using 5x5.
• N1 adds triangles between pixels that do not necessarily belong together, such as in spirals like U+0040 or jampacked glyphs like U+20A7. N2 operates on edges and knows their direction, and avoids making connections to "pixel islands" at certain angles.

saven2¶

Similar to -savesfd, this produces an SFD file, but uses an alternate vectorizer (aptly named "N2"), which smoothens the jagged edges of a bitmap font.

The N2 vectorizer is able to recognize the "stair" pattern of pixels and transform these sections to 45-degree angles. This diagonalization was originally employed by Arto Hatanpää (possibly in a long session of manual work) for the "Nouveau IBM" and "Nouveau IBM Stretch" vector font versions of the IBM VGA 9x16 ROM font.

The defining characteristic of N2 is that it analyzes glyph edges (similar to those produced by -savesfd) using a lookaround window of 7 edge segments, which is used to work on areas of effectively 5x5 pixels. When a 90/270 corner is found, it will be transformed by adding diagonal edges.

In comparison to other scalers,

• xBRZ erroneously round the ends of strokes (e.g. the '-' dash), N1/N2 does not.
• While xBRZ is a bitmap-to-bitmap procedure (also limited to 6x magnification as of writing), N1/N2 converts to vector.
• Autotrace/Potrace just is not targeted for low resolution sources (as 8x16 bitmap fonts are). Either it will convert the bitmap 1:1 with jagged edges, or turn it into three or so beziers, which is not nearly enough for '&'.
• N1/N2 is only specified for monochrome input.

savepsf¶

Saves the current in-memory glyphs as a PC Screen Font PSF2.0 file, which can then be loaded into a Linux text console with setfont(1). The in-memory Unicode mapping table is added to the PSF.

savesfd¶

Saves the font to a Spline Font Database file (SFD). This type of file can be processed further by fontforge(1). A fairly trivial vectorizer is used that maps each pixels to a square and then collapses shared edges between those to reduce the number of polygons fontforge has to process.

setbold¶

For BDF/SFD output: Declare the font as being bold.

setname¶

Sets a name for the font, which gets emitted for BDF/SFD output. (The other file formats have no metadata field for a name, so the filename is all you get.)

setprop¶

Sets a specific property for SFD fonts (also partly used by BDF).

upscale¶

Performs a linear upscale by an integral factor for all glyphs.

xcpi¶

Extracts a multi-font .cpi file (as was typically used on DOS) as separate .fnt files into the specified directory. This operation does not touch the in-memory glyph buffers or Unicode mapping table.

xlat¶

Moves all glyphs around within their canvases by the specified amount. vfontas's coordinate system has (0,0) in the upper left corner, with positive x going to the right, and positive y going down.