1restorefont(1) Svgalib User Manual restorefont(1)
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6 restorefont - save or restore the SVGA font for textmode.
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9 restorefont {-r|-w} filename
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13 The font used by SVGA when in textmode is written to or restored from
14 filename using the vga_gettextfont(3) and vga_puttextfont(3) functions.
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18 The VGA font file filename has the following format:
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20 Offset:
21 0 - 31 Character 0
22 ... ...
23 8164 - 8195 Character 255
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25 Each row of a character bitmap is stored as a byte (8 pixels). The
26 space that is left from the 32-byte buffer for each character is
27 ignored, e.g. a 16 line font uses only offsets 0 - 15 of each charac‐
28 ter.
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30 Linux textmode screen resolutions:
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32 80x25 16 line font 400 scanlines
33 80x28 14 line font 400 scanlines
34 80x50 8 line font 400 scanlines
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36 The font sizes and resolutions of extended textmodes depend on the
37 video card type and BIOS:
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39 132x25 14 line font 350 scanlines (ugly)
40 132x25 16 line font 400 scanlines
41 132x43 8 line font 350 scanlines (use fix132x43 to fix/improve)
42 132x50 8 line font 400 scanlines
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44 Using a font that has less lines per character than the textmode works,
45 but the characters are smaller. Using a font that is bigger than the
46 textmode font results in the bottom part of characters being cut off.
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48 The svgalib distribution contains sample fonts with 8, 14 and 16 line
49 characters in the files utils/font8, utils/font14, and utils/font16.
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51 The convfont (1) program can be used to convert fonts straightforwardly
52 stored character-after-character (i.e. each character only uses
53 8/14/whatever bytes), to the 32-byte per character format that restore‐
54 font requires.
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56 The purpose of this program is usually to recover from a crashed con‐
57 sole due to an svgalib, Xfree or other program bug. First save the
58 state of the SVGA card when on a text console. After the crash restore
59 this state. The savetextmode(1) and textmode(1) script makes this pro‐
60 cedure very easy.
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62 The national/fontpak packages, which include kernel patches, allow dif‐
63 ferent textmode fonts to be used in different virtual consoles. These
64 have been superseded by the kbd package (in the kernel since ages). See
65 the setfont(8) utility of the kbd package as a starting point.
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67 Recent kernels support up to 2 fonts with 512 chars each. Recent ver‐
68 sions of svgalib take this into account and extend the size of the
69 datafile accordingly.
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73 -w filename
74 write the font to the file filename.
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76 -r filename
77 restore the font from the file filename.
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81 svgalib(7), vgagl(7), libvga.config(5), setfont(8), vga_gettextfont(3),
82 vga_puttextfont(3), dumpreg(1), convfont(1), fix132x43(1), restore‐
83 textmode(1), restorepalette(1), runx(1), savetextmode(1), setmclk(1),
84 textmode(1).
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87 This manual page was edited by Michael Weller <eowmob@exp-math.uni-
88 essen.de>. The exact source of the referenced utility as well as of the
89 original documentation is unknown.
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91 It is very likely that both are at least to some extent are due to Harm
92 Hanemaayer <H.Hanemaayer@inter.nl.net>.
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94 Occasionally this might be wrong. I hereby asked to be excused by the
95 original author and will happily accept any additions or corrections to
96 this first version of the svgalib manual.
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100Svgalib (>= 1.2.11) 2 Aug 1997 restorefont(1)