[91caf42] | 1 | <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
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| 2 | <!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
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| 3 | "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
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| 4 | <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../../general.ent">
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| 5 | %general-entities;
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| 6 | ]>
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| 7 |
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| 8 | <sect1 id="postlfs-console-fonts" xreflabel="About Console Fonts">
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| 9 | <?dbhtml filename="console-fonts.html"?>
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| 10 |
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| 11 | <sect1info>
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| 12 | <date>$Date$</date>
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| 13 | </sect1info>
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| 14 |
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| 15 | <title>About Console Fonts</title>
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| 16 |
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| 17 | <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts">
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| 18 | <primary sortas="a-console-fonts">console-fonts</primary>
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| 19 | </indexterm>
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| 20 |
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| 21 | <para>
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| 22 | An LFS system can be used without a graphical desktop, and unless or until
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| 23 | you install <xref linkend="x-window-system"/> you will have to work in the
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| 24 | console. Most, if not all, PCs boot with an 8x16 font - whatever the actual
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| 25 | screen size. There are a few things you can do to alter the display on the
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| 26 | console. Most of them involve changing the font, but the first alters the
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| 27 | commandline used by grub.
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| 28 | </para>
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| 29 |
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| 30 | <para condition="html" role="usernotes">User Notes:
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| 31 | <ulink url="&blfs-wiki;/aboutconsolefonts"/></para>
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| 32 |
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| 33 | <sect2 id="grub-video">
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| 34 | <title>Setting a smaller screen size in grub</title>
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| 35 |
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| 36 | <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts grub-video">
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| 37 | <primary sortas="e-boot-grub-grub-cfg">/boot/grub/grub.cfg</primary>
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| 38 | </indexterm>
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| 39 |
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| 40 | <para>
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| 41 | Modern screens often have a lot more pixels then the screens used in the
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| 42 | past. If your screen is 1600 pixels wide, an 8x16 font will give you 200
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| 43 | columns of text - unless your monitor is enormous, the text will be tiny.
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| 44 | One of the ways to work around this is to tell grub to use a smaller size,
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| 45 | such as 1024x768 or 800x600 or even 640x480. Even if your screen does not
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| 46 | have a 4:3 aspect ratio, this should work.
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| 47 | </para>
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| 48 |
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| 49 | <para>
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| 50 | To try this, you can reboot and edit grub's command-line to insert a
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| 51 | 'video=' parameter between the 'root=/dev/sdXn' and 'ro', for example
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| 52 | <literal>root=/dev/sda2 video=1024x768 ro</literal> based on the
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[f0dc9578] | 53 | example in LFS section 10.4.4 :
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[50836740] | 54 | <ulink url="&lfs-root;/chapter10/grub.html"/>.
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[91caf42] | 55 | </para>
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| 56 |
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| 57 | <para>
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| 58 | If you decide that you wish to do this, you can then (as the
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| 59 | <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user) edit
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| 60 | <filename>/boot/grub/grub.cfg</filename>.
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| 61 | </para>
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| 62 |
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| 63 | </sect2>
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| 64 |
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| 65 | <sect2 id="psf-fonts">
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| 66 | <title>Using the standard psf fonts</title>
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| 67 |
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| 68 | <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts psf-fonts">
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| 69 | <primary sortas="g-usr-share-consolefonts">/usr/share/consolefonts</primary>
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| 70 | </indexterm>
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| 71 |
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| 72 | <para>
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| 73 | In LFS the <application>kbd</application> package is used. The fonts it
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| 74 | provides are PC Screen Fonts, usually called PSF, and they were installed
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| 75 | into <filename class="directory">/usr/share/consolefonts</filename>. Where
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| 76 | these include a unicode mapping table, the file suffix is often changed to
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| 77 | <literal>.psfu</literal> although packages such as
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| 78 | <application>terminus-font</application> (see below) do not add the 'u'.
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| 79 | These fonts are usually compressed with gzip to save space, but that is
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| 80 | not essential.
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| 81 | </para>
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| 82 |
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| 83 | <para>
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| 84 | The initial PC text screens had 8 colours, or 16 colours if the bright
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| 85 | versions of the original 8 colours were used. A PSF font can include up
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| 86 | to 256 characters (technically, glyphs) while allowing 16 colours, or up
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| 87 | to 512 characters (in which case, the bright colours will not be
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| 88 | available). Clearly, these console fonts cannot be used to display CJK
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| 89 | text - that would need thousands of available glyphs.
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| 90 | </para>
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| 91 |
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| 92 | <para>
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| 93 | Some fonts in <application>kbd</application> can cover more than 512
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| 94 | codepoints ('characters'), with varying degrees of fidelity: unicode
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| 95 | contains several whitespace codepoints which can all be mapped to a space,
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| 96 | varieties of dashes can be mapped to a minus sign, smart quotes can map to
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| 97 | the regular ASCII quotes rather than to whatever is used for "codepoint
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| 98 | not present or invalid", and those cyrillic or greek letters which look
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| 99 | like latin letters can be mapped onto them, so 'A' can also do duty for
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| 100 | cyrillic A and greek Alpha, and 'P' can also do duty for cyrillic ER and
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| 101 | greek RHO. Unfortunately, where a font has been created from a BDF file
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| 102 | (the method in terminus and debian's <ulink
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| 103 | url="https://packages.debian.org/jessie/utils/console-setup">console-setup
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[d353fdd] | 104 | </ulink>) such mapping of additional codepoints onto an existing glyph is
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| 105 | not always done, although the terminus ter-vXXn fonts do this well.
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[91caf42] | 106 | </para>
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| 107 |
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| 108 | <para>
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| 109 | There are over 120 combinations of font and size in
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| 110 | <application>kbd</application>: often a font is provided at several
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| 111 | character sizes, and sometimes varieties cover different subsets of
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| 112 | unicode. Most are 8 pixels wide, in heights from 8 to 16 pixels, but there
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| 113 | are a few which are 9 pixels wide, some others which are 12x22, and even
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| 114 | one (<filename>latarcyrheb-sun32.psfu</filename>) which has been scaled up
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| 115 | to 16x32. Using a bigger font is another way of making text on a large
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| 116 | screen easier to read.
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| 117 | </para>
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| 118 |
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| 119 | </sect2>
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| 120 |
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| 121 | <sect2 id="testing-fonts">
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| 122 | <title>Testing different fonts</title>
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| 123 |
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| 124 | <para>
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| 125 | You can test fonts as a normal user. If you have a font which has not been
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| 126 | installed, you can load it with :
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| 127 | </para>
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| 128 |
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| 129 | <screen><userinput>setfont /path/to/yourfont.ext</userinput></screen>
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| 130 |
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| 131 | <para>
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| 132 | For the fonts already installed you only need the name, so using
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| 133 | <filename>gr737a-9x16.psfu.gz</filename> as an example:
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| 134 | </para>
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| 135 |
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| 136 | <screen><userinput>setfont gr737a-9x16</userinput></screen>
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| 137 |
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| 138 | <para>
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| 139 | To see the glyphs in the font, use:
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| 140 | </para>
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| 141 |
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| 142 | <screen><userinput>showconsolefont</userinput></screen>
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| 143 |
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| 144 | <para>
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| 145 | If the font looks as if it might be useful, you can then go on to test it
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| 146 | more thoroughly.
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| 147 | </para>
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| 148 |
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| 149 | <para>
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[32b15287] | 150 | When you find a font which you wish to use, as the
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[91caf42] | 151 | <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user) edit
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| 152 | <phrase revision="sysv">
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| 153 | <filename>/etc/sysconfig/console</filename> as described in
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[f0dc9578] | 154 | LFS section 9.6.5
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| 155 | <ulink url="&lfs-root;/chapter09/usage.html"/>.</phrase>
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[91caf42] | 156 | <phrase revision="systemd">
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| 157 | <filename>/etc/vconsole.conf</filename> as described in
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[f0dc9578] | 158 | LFS section 9.6
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[50836740] | 159 | <ulink url="&lfs-root;/chapter09/console.html"/>.</phrase>.
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[91caf42] | 160 | </para>
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| 161 |
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| 162 | <para>
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| 163 | For fonts not supplied with the <application>kbd</application> package
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| 164 | you will need to optionally compress it / them with
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| 165 | <command>gzip</command> and then install it / them as the
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| 166 | <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user.
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| 167 | </para>
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| 168 |
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| 169 | </sect2>
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| 170 |
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| 171 | <!-- after that, psf-tools -->
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| 172 |
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| 173 | <sect2 id="psf-tools">
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| 174 | <title>Editing fonts using psf-tools</title>
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| 175 |
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| 176 | <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts psf-tools">
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| 177 | <primary sortas="a-psftools">psftools</primary>
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| 178 | </indexterm>
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| 179 |
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| 180 | <para>
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| 181 | Although some console fonts are created from BDF files, which is a text
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| 182 | format with hex values for the pixels in each row of the character, there
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| 183 | are more-modern tools available for editing psf fonts. The
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| 184 | <ulink url="http://www.seasip.info/Unix/PSF/">psftools</ulink> package
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| 185 | allows you to dump a font to a text representation with a dash for a
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| 186 | pixel which is off (black) and a hash for a pixel which is on (white).
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| 187 | You can then edit the text file to add more characters, or reshape them,
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| 188 | or map extra codepoints onto them, and then create a new psf font with
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| 189 | your changes.
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| 190 | </para>
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| 191 |
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| 192 | </sect2>
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| 193 |
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[d353fdd] | 194 | <!-- finally, link to terminus and link to it from above -->
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[91caf42] | 195 | <sect2 id="terminus-font">
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| 196 | <title>Using fonts from Terminus-font</title>
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| 197 |
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| 198 | <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts terminus-font">
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| 199 | <primary sortas="a-terminus-font">terminus-font</primary>
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| 200 | </indexterm>
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| 201 |
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| 202 | <para>
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| 203 | The <ulink
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| 204 | url="http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/">Terminus Font</ulink> package
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| 205 | provides fixed-width bitmap fonts designed for long (8 hours and more per
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| 206 | day) work with computers. Under 'Character variants' on that page is a
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| 207 | list of patches (in the <filename class="directory">alt/</filename>
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| 208 | directory). If you are using a graphical browser to look at that page, you
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| 209 | can see what the patches do, e.g. 'll2' makes 'l' more visibly different
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| 210 | from 'i' and '1'.
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| 211 | </para>
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| 212 |
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| 213 | <para>
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| 214 | By default <application>terminus-fonts</application> will try to create
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| 215 | several types of font, and it will fail if <command>bdftopcf</command>
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| 216 | from <xref linkend="xorg7-app"/> has not been installed. The configure
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| 217 | script is only really useful if you go on to install
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| 218 | <emphasis>all</emphasis> the fonts (console and X11 bitmap) to the
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| 219 | correct directories, as in a distro. To build only the PSF fonts and
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| 220 | their dependencies, run:
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| 221 | </para>
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| 222 |
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| 223 | <screen><userinput>make psf</userinput></screen>
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| 224 |
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| 225 | <para>
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| 226 | This will create more than 240 ter-*.psf fonts. The 'b' suffix indicates
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| 227 | bright, 'n' indicates normal. You can then test them to see if any fit
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| 228 | your requirements. Unless you are creating a distro, there seems little
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| 229 | point in installing them all.
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| 230 | </para>
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| 231 |
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| 232 | <para>
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| 233 | As an example, to install the last of these fonts, you can gzip it and
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| 234 | then as the
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| 235 | <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user:
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| 236 | </para>
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| 237 |
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| 238 | <screen><userinput>install -v -m644 ter-v32n.psf.gz /usr/share/consolefonts</userinput></screen>
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| 239 |
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| 240 | </sect2>
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| 241 |
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| 242 |
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| 243 | <!-- then svn up, add changelog, do the propsets, create wiki page -->
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| 244 | </sect1>
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