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<H2><A NAME="s7">7.</A> <A HREF="lct.html#toc7">Font files</A></H2>

<H2><A NAME="ss7.1">7.1</A> <A HREF="lct.html#toc7.1">The formats</A>
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<P>The primary font file format for the Linux Console Tools, as of version 0.2.x, is
the PSF format, which is also used by <CODE>kbd</CODE>.  0.3.x will introduce the
XPSF format, which will be able to replace all existing file formats.</P>
<P>Raw fonts can be converted into PSF files with the <CODE>font2psf(1)</CODE>
(written by Martin Lohner, SuSE GmbH).</P>
<P>Versions 0.2.x do not have support for the CP format again - this will
come back in the 0.3.x development branch.</P>

<H2><A NAME="ss7.2">7.2</A> <A HREF="lct.html#toc7.2">Tools</A>
</H2>

<H3>Font-files manipulation tools</H3>

<P>The <CODE>psfaddtable(1)</CODE>, <CODE>psfgettable(1)</CODE>, and
<CODE>psfstriptable(1)</CODE> tools are provided by the Linux Console Tools for manipulation
of the SFM embedded in PSF files.  These are the only
font-manipulation tools provided by the Linux Console Tools as of version 0.2.x.
The <CODE>font2psf(1)</CODE> tool is available in the <CODE>contrib</CODE> directory
to convert old raw fonts into PSF fonts.</P>
<P>There are plans for a more generic font-conversion tool based on
libcfont.  It will be mostly trivial to write once work on libcfont
will be advanced enough.</P>
<P>The only way provided by the Linux Console Tools to display a font's contents is to load it, and then to display it using <CODE>showfont(1)</CODE>.</P>

<H3>Font editors</H3>

<P>I do not curently know of a good font-editor suitable for editing
console fonts.  I tried <CODE>fonter</CODE>, but this one has a bad design
flaw: you can only properly edit cp437 fonts (or maybe ASCII-based
fonts if you like unreadable screens) because it works on the console
and loads the font you are editing.  I was told about <CODE>cse</CODE> which I
did not tried yet.  Marcin Kowalczyk is working on the 
<A HREF="http://kki.net.pl/qrczak/programy/index.html">fonty</A> tool
(which I did not check yet either), which will help font designers,
but is not AFAIK a real editor.  Robert de Bath works on 
<A HREF="http://www.cix.co.uk/~mayday/font.tgz">his own tools</A>
which handle a variety of file formats and table formats.</P>

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