Hey guys, Anybody savvy about fonts? Specifically bitmap fonts? (Doubt it, there's so many variations, it's very confusing.)
I've never really checked into all the various FreeDOS software out there, even stuff in "UTIL". So sometimes I have to accidentally stumble upon something to know what it is, what it does, etc. For instance, I recently stumbled upon LOADFONT (aka, GNUchcp, circa 2001). It's a very very very simple program, just calls the BIOS to load font into memory. It comes with a few fonts (of unknown origin, though). http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=loadfont <boring> It also had an extra pack of fonts which was never uploaded properly until I recently found it. In fact, I'm now seeing that even his Ttf2Fnt.zip was corrupted too. But I'm not replacing that as it's a Windows-only program anyways, even if GPL. Quite honestly, I'm not sure if it works [I tried one font the other day and it failed], much less is legal, even if "most" people say "bitmap fonts" can't be copyrighted. Nowadays people prefer scalable outline fonts like .Ttf or similar. </boring> Anyways, out of curiosity, I've been (very weakly) looking into other fonts, e.g. Terminus. Of course, it comes in .bdf format, which isn't DOS friendly. The GNU Unifont dude has some Perl scripts to convert .bdf to his preferred .hex format, and from hexdraw.pl it will convert to a format that is almost usable by me. In other words, for an 8x16 font, you need 16 bytes, and each bit represents whether a "pixel" (?) of the font is showing. So long story short, I massaged it to be in x86 assembly format, which will assemble with NASM or FASM. So now you can use gnuchcp.exe and terminus.f16 in real DOS. Here's an example of how its source looks: ; 0034: db 00000000b db 00000000b db 00000010b db 00000110b db 00001010b db 00010010b db 00100010b db 01000010b db 01111110b db 00000010b db 00000010b db 00000010b db 00000000b db 00000000b db 00000000b db 00000000b http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/ http://czyborra.com/unifont/ So I uploaded this (terminus.f16, terminus.asm, ofl.txt "open font license 1.1") to iBiblio for us. http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/fonts/ A quick check of my mail archives shows a thread (freedos-devel) from last August about Terminus between Ivan S. and Laaca (though more about potential use with Blocek than text mode). So here, good enough for now. (I am not totally sure what font sizes GNUchcp supports. It seems to resize my screen to what the BIOS calls 80x21. I have no idea if 8x14 or 8x8 would also work. Probably, but it's less popular. Ask me if interested, but it's not hard to do.) P.S. Halfway out of rage at inane copyright laws and the frustration they cause (even for dumb things like bitmap fonts), the other day I did use the old freeware DOS editor 2L8 (aka, Fonte) to create my own font. For laughs, I named it legalese.f16. I also rewrote the gnuchcp.pas program into pure assembly (esp. since TP isn't redistributable). So it went from 3904 bytes to only 134. For now, I'm not uploading these because I doubt anyone cares (i.e. terminus looks more professional), but feel free to ask .... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) platform delivers complete security visibility with the essential security capabilities. Easily and efficiently configure, manage, and operate all of your security controls from a single console and one unified framework. Download a free trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/alienvault_d2d _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
