1UNIFONT(5) File Formats Manual UNIFONT(5)
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6 Unifont - A bitmapped font with full Unicode Plane 0 (BMP) coverage
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9 unifont.hex
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12 Unifont is a bitmapped font with glyphs described in a plain text file,
13 generically referred to as unifont.hex herein. This man page describes
14 the format of three related files: unifont.hex, masks.hex, and combin‐
15 ing.txt. All three of these files start with a Unicode code point as a
16 hexadecimal string, with code points appearing in ascending order.
17 A unifont.hex file consists of single-line entries for each Unicode
19 code point. Each line contains the code point, a colon (':') field
20 separator, and the glyph bitmap. The glyphs in a unifont.hex format
21 file must appear in ascending Unicode code point order.
22 This file can be converted into a BDF font using the hex2bdf (1) pro‐
24 gram, and into a TrueType font using fontforge (1) (which is not part
25 of this package). The BDF font can also be converted into a PCF font
26 using bdftopcf (1) (which is also not part of this package).
27 The first field
29 The first field is the Unicode code point in hexadecimal, rang‐
30 ing from "0000" through "FFFF", inclusive. This corresponds to
31 the Unicode code points U+0000 through U+FFFF, respectively.
32 The second field
34 The second field is the glyph's bitmap string. This is a series
35 of hexadecimal digits. Currently Unifont encodes two glyph
36 sizes: 8 pixels wide by 16 pixels tall (single-width), and 16
37 pixels wide by 16 pixels tall (double-width).
38 As each hexadecimal digit can encode four bits, one pixel row of
40 a glyph is either two hexadecimal digits long (single-width) or
41 four hexadecimal digits long (double-width). The glyphs are 16
42 pixels tall, so a single-width glyph is (2)(16) = 32 hexadecimal
43 digits long and a double-width glyph is (4)(16) = 64 hexadecimal
44 digits long.
45 Previous versions of this package supplied a file named masks.hex.
47 This file followed the same format as unifont.hex with a first field
48 that was a Unicode code point in hexadecimal, followed by a colon (':')
49 field separator, followed by a second field that was a hexadecimal
50 string representing a glyph bitmap. Code points were in ascending
51 order. The glyph bitmaps were bitmaps that would be exclusive-ored
52 with the glyph in unifont.hex that had the same code point. The origi‐
53 nal unifont.hex contained combining circles as depicted in The Unicode
54 Standard. When Paul Hardy got combining characters to display properly
55 in the TrueType version, it became desirable to remove these combining
56 circles for proper display with unifont.ttf. The program uniunmask (1)
57 will read such a masks.hex file, read a unifont.hex format file, and
58 apply the exclusive-or masks in masks.hex to unifont.hex. The output
59 is another file in unifont.hex format with the masked-off bits (i.e.,
60 combining circles) removed.
61 Because the operation is an exclusive-or, masks.hex could also be used
63 to turn on pixels in selective glyphs, for example to add combining
64 circles to selective glyphs that do not show them. However, the pro‐
65 gram unigencircles (1) can do this without a separate masks.hex file.
66 Thus masks.hex is no longer supplied with this package. uniunmask (1)
67 remains part of this distribution in case someone might find creating a
68 custom masks.hex file useful for another purpose.
69 The TrueType version of the font, unifont.ttf, and the unigencircles
71 [1m(1) utility both read a file combining.txt. This file appears in the
72 directory font/ttfsrc. The combining.txt file is a list of code points
73 as hexadecimal strings, one per line in ascending order, of Unicode
74 code points that show combining circles in The Unicode Standard. Any
75 glyph with its code point listed in combining.txt will have zero width
76 in unifont.ttf.
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79 Roman Czyborra, the font's creator, originally wrote two Perl scripts
80 as utilities: bdfimplode (1) and hexdraw (1).
81 The bdfimplode (1) Perl script reads in a font in BDF format and gener‐
83 ates a font output in unifont.hex format.
84 The hexdraw (1) Perl script might appear somewhat magical. It can read
86 a file in unifont.hex format and generate a text file with each glyph
87 appearing as a grid of characters in an 8 by 16 or 16 by 16 grid: a '-'
88 character indicates a corresponding white pixel, and a '#' character
89 indicates a corresponding black pixel. These pixel grids are indented.
90 The first line shows the code point for a glyph, followed by a colon
91 (':'). This text file can then be modified with any text editor. The
92 magical part about hexdraw (1) is that it will read in this text file,
93 detect that it is in this converted format, and produce as output a
94 second file in Unifont's .hex format. Thus hexdraw (1) automagically
95 provides round-trip coverage between an original font file in uni‐
96 font.hex format and an intermediate text graphics format for editing.
97 Utilities introduced after those first two convert a file in uni‐
99 font.hex format to and from bitmapped graphics (".bmp") files. The
100 unihex2bmp (1) program converts a file in unifont.hex format into a
101 .bmp format file, for editing with a graphics editor. The unibmp2hex
102 [1m(1) program performs the reverse conversion, from a bitmapped graphics
103 format back to a file in unifont.hex format.
104 hexdraw (1), unihex2bmp (1), and unibmp2hex (1) are the central pro‐
106 grams that handle conversion of a unifont.hex file to and from two-
107 dimensional glyph representations for visual editing. See the TUTORIAL
108 file included in the source pakcage for more information on these and
109 other utilities to customize unifont.hex format files. Also consult
110 the man pages for the utilities listed below.
111
113 The following files are part of the Unifont source distribution:
114 font/plane00/*.hex
116 GNU Unifont font files
117 LICENSE The Unifont license
119 README Instructions on building Unifont
121 TUTORIAL Tutorial on customizing Unifont
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125 bdfimplode(1), hex2bdf(1), hex2sfd(1), hexbraille(1), hexdraw(1),
126 hexkinya(1), hexmerge(1), johab2ucs2(1), unibdf2hex(1), unibmp2hex(1),
127 unicoverage(1), unidup(1), unifont-viewer(1), unifont1per(1), uni‐
128 fontchojung(1), unifontksx(1), unifontpic(1), unigencircles(1), unigen‐
129 width(1), unihex2bmp(1), unihex2png(1), unihexfill(1), unihexgen(1),
130 unipagecount(1), unipng2hex(1)
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133 The unifont.hex format was created by Roman Czyborra, who drew the
134 original set of glyphs.
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137 unifont is Copyright © 1998 Roman Czyborra, with portions Copyright ©
138 2007–2013 Paul Hardy, Copyright © 2004–2013 Qianqian Fang, and others.
139 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
141 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
142 Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
143 option) any later version.
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146 The format is very straihtforward and no real bugs exist. However,
147 Unifont's original BDF font format does not support Unicode's combining
148 characters (accents, etc.); only the TrueType version of Unifont does.
149 2013 Sep 27 UNIFONT(5)