[Freedos-user] Terminus font (8x16 normal)
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 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. 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 b db b db 0010b db 0110b db 1010b db 00010010b db 00100010b db 0110b db 0110b db 0010b db 0010b db 0010b db b db b db b db b 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
Re: [Freedos-user] Terminus font (8x16 normal)
Hi, On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 5:59 PM, Rugxulo wrote: > > http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=loadfont > > > 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. > Apparently, TTF2FNT is already part of FreeDOS' "UTIL" section. So I'd feel silly not including it (even despite all of the above problems). It's not my decision whether to remove it from the project, so I've gone ahead and uploaded it "correctly." http://www.freedos.org/software/?prog=ttf2fnt http://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/system/fonts/ttf2fnt.zip -- 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
Re: [Freedos-user] Terminus font (8x16 normal)
Hi again, On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 5:59 PM, Rugxulo wrote: > > 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/ > > I am not totally sure what font sizes GNUchcp supports. It seems > to resize my screen [from 80x43] to what the BIOS calls 80x21. Not sure of the details, but starting in 80x50 before running "gnuchcp" will load the font into what is being identified as 80x25. (Some text editors are quite picky about what resolutions they support.) > 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 I ended up finishing this, though its .COM is now 333 bytes (still plenty small enough, fits in a single floppy cluster!). The original source was not complicated (56 lines = 890 chars, basically just called two BIOS funcs). I added a help screen and some options ("-a", "-e") to emulate the previous two versions of GNUCHCP (found in LOADFONT and Freemacs MULE, respectively). v1 only loaded the first 127 chars, preserving any existing extended ASCII already loaded. v2 only loaded FFE binary output files, which contain only the upper 128 chars! v3 here loads all 256 chars by default (so with my Terminus conversion you get 7-bit ASCII as well as full Latin 1). It's now uploaded (with NASM source, plain text manual, legalese.f16, int 10h 11xxh API reference) to the above-mentioned /fonts/ subdir on iBiblio. This was not super important nor high priority, but maybe it's slightly better overall. -- How ServiceNow helps IT people transform IT departments: 1. A cloud service to automate IT design, transition and operations 2. Dashboards that offer high-level views of enterprise services 3. A single system of record for all IT processes http://p.sf.net/sfu/servicenow-d2d-j ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user