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have been superseded by the kbd package (in the kernel since ages).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