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NAME
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font, subfont – external format for fonts and subfonts
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SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
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Fonts and subfonts are described in cachechars(3).
External bitmap fonts are described by a plain text file that
can be read using openfont. The format of the file is a header
followed by any number of subfont range specifications. The header
contains two numbers: the height and the ascent, both in pixels.
The height is the inter-line spacing and the ascent is the distance
from the top of the line to the
baseline. These numbers are chosen to display consistently all
the subfonts of the font. A subfont range specification contains
two or three numbers and a file name. The numbers are the inclusive
range of characters covered by the subfont, with an optional starting
position within the subfont, and the file name names an external
file suitable for
readsubfont (see graphics(3)). The minimum number of a covered
range is mapped to the specified starting position (default zero)
of the corresponding subfont. If the subfont file name does not
begin with a slash, it is taken relative to the directory containing
the font file. Each field must be followed by some white space.
Each numeric field may be C-
format decimal, octal, or hexadecimal.
External subfonts are represented in a more rigid format that
can be read and written using readsubfont and writesubfont (see
subfont(3)). The format for subfont files is: an image containing
character glyphs, followed by a subfont header, followed by character
information. The image has the format for external image files
described in image(7). The
subfont header has 3 decimal strings: n, height, and ascent. Each
number is right-justified and blank padded in 11 characters, followed
by a blank. The character info consists of n+1 6-byte entries,
each giving the Fontchar x (2 bytes, low order byte first), top,
bottom, left, and width. The x field of the last Fontchar is used
to calculate the
image width of the previous character; the other fields in the
last Fontchar are irrelevant.
Note that the convention of using the character with value zero
(NUL) to represent characters of zero width (see draw(3)) means
that fonts should have, as their zeroth character, one with non-zero
width.
Font Names
Font names in Plan 9 from User Space are a small language describing
a font. The most basic form is the name of an existing bitmap
font file, following the convention:
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/lib/font/bit/name/range.size.font
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where size is approximately the height in pixels of the lower
case letters (without ascenders or descenders). Range gives some
indication of which characters will be available: for example
ascii, latin1, euro, or unicode. Euro includes most European languages,
punctuation marks, the International Phonetic Alphabet, etc.,
but no Asian
languages. Unicode includes every character for which appropriate-sized
images exist on the system.
In Plan 9 from User Space, the font files are rooted in $PLAN9/font
instead of /lib/font/bit, but to keep old references working,
paths beginning with /lib/font/bit are interpreted as references
to the actual font directory.
Fonts need not be stored on disk in the Plan 9 format. If the
font name has the form /mnt/font/name/size/font, fontsrv is invoked
to synthesize a bitmap font from the operating system’s installed
vector fonts. The command fontsrv −p . lists the available fonts.
See fontsrv(4) for more.
If the font name has the form scale*fontname, where scale is a
small decimal integer, the fontname is loaded and then scaled
by pixel repetition.
The Plan 9 bitmap fonts were designed for screens with pixel density
around 100 DPI. When used on screens with pixel density above
200 DPI, the bitmap fonts are automatically pixel doubled. Similarly,
fonts loaded from fontsrv(4) are automatically doubled in size
by varying the effective size path element. In both cases, the
effect is that a single font
name can be used on both low- and high-density displays (or even
in a window moved between differing displays) while keeping roughly
the same effective size.
For more control over the fonts used on low- and high-density
displays, if the font name has the form lowfont,highfont, lowfont
is used on low-density displays and highfont on high-density displays.
In effect, the behavior described above is that the font name
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/lib/font/bit/lucsans/euro.8.font
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really means
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/lib/font/bit/lucsans/euro.8.font,2*/lib/font/bit/lucsans/euro.8.font
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and similarly
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/mnt/font/LucidaGrande/15a/font
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really means
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/mnt/font/LucidaGrande/15a/font,/mnt/font/LucidaGrande/30a/font
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Using an explicit comma-separated font pair allows finer control,
such as using a Plan 9 bitmap font on low-density displays but
switching to a system-installed vector font on high-density displays:
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/lib/font/bit/lucsans/euro.8.font,/mnt/font/LucidaGrande/30a/font
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FILES
SEE ALSO
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