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#1 2012-07-25 21:44:59

xelados
Member
Registered: 2007-06-02
Posts: 314
Website

Bitmap font not working as expected

I've been using bdfedit and gbdfed to try to make my first bitmap font and I've been having a bit of trouble. When I use bdftopcf and try to set the console's font with `setfont`, I get a "Bad input file size" error. I've checked with gtkfontsel and it's listed, but displays as Sans.

I think there are properties I'm not setting correctly and/or I'm not doing something properly when converting to a PCF file. I've search all over the Internet for some sort of guide, studied a few other bitmap fonts, and scoured the wiki for information. I've ran out of information sources. I'll link to the bdf file for those who want to take a peek at it: http://sporkbox.us/junk/sporkfont.bdf

Thanks for reading.

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#2 2012-07-27 16:22:53

stlarch
Member
From: hell
Registered: 2010-12-25
Posts: 1,265

Re: Bitmap font not working as expected

First, I would avoid bdfedit and just use gbdfed. Console fonts need to be converted to psf. You can use gbdfed to do this using the export to psf function. It will create a psfu font. Copy that to /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts. And then try to use setfont. If you have problems, you might want to look at psfgettable, psfstriptable and psfaddtable.

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#3 2012-07-27 21:25:20

xelados
Member
Registered: 2007-06-02
Posts: 314
Website

Re: Bitmap font not working as expected

I've gotten two errors so far:

"setfont: KDFONTOP: Invalid argument"

and

"Bad character height 0"

The table that the file has is straight-up hex lines:

#
# Character table extracted from font sporkfont.psfu
#
0x000	
0x001	
0x002	
0x003	
0x004	
0x005	
0x006	
0x007	
0x008	
0x009	
0x00a	
0x00b	
0x00c	
0x00d	
0x00e	
0x00f	
0x010	
0x011	
0x012	
0x013	
0x014	
0x015	
0x016	
0x017	
0x018	
0x019	
0x01a	
0x01b	
0x01c	
0x01d	
0x01e	
0x01f	
0x020	
0x021	
0x022	
0x023	
0x024	
0x025	
0x026	
0x027	
0x028	
0x029	
0x02a	
0x02b	
0x02c	
0x02d	
0x02e	
0x02f	
0x030	
0x031	
0x032	
0x033	
0x034	
0x035	
0x036	
0x037	
0x038	
0x039	
0x03a	
0x03b	
0x03c	
0x03d	
0x03e	
0x03f	
0x040	
0x041	
0x042	
0x043	
0x044	
0x045	
0x046	
0x047	
0x048	
0x049	
0x04a	
0x04b	
0x04c	
0x04d	
0x04e	
0x04f	
0x050	
0x051	
0x052	
0x053	
0x054	
0x055	
0x056	
0x057	
0x058	
0x059	
0x05a	
0x05b	
0x05c	
0x05d	
0x05e	
0x05f	
0x060	
0x061	
0x062	
0x063	
0x064	
0x065	
0x066	
0x067	
0x068	
0x069	
0x06a	
0x06b	
0x06c	
0x06d	
0x06e	
0x06f	
0x070	
0x071	
0x072	
0x073	
0x074	
0x075	
0x076	
0x077	
0x078	
0x079	
0x07a	
0x07b	
0x07c	
0x07d	
0x07e	
0x07f	

No dice.

EDIT: I tried searching the web for these errors to see if I could nail something down... I also took a look at unifont's bdf to see where I went wrong... why is there so little information on making fonts?

Interesting, though; moving the .bdf file to my ~/.fonts directory makes gtk2fontsel display it properly. So there must be something happening to the way it's being converted to a PSF that's preventing it from becoming a "real font"...

Last edited by xelados (2012-08-16 23:19:00)

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#4 2012-07-28 06:18:22

stlarch
Member
From: hell
Registered: 2010-12-25
Posts: 1,265

Re: Bitmap font not working as expected

Yeah, I was having a hard time finding any info too. I took a look at your font. It's different then the ones I did and I really don't know that much about it either. I think part of the problem is that it needs to be 256 characters. Try filling in empty spaces up to FF00 and then use gbdfed to export it to psfu and see if that at least gets it working.

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