man > BDFTOPCF

BDFTOPCF(1)                            General Commands Manual                           BDFTOPCF(1)

NAME
       bdftopcf - convert X font from Bitmap Distribution Format to Portable Compiled Format

SYNOPSIS
       bdftopcf  [  -pn  ] [ -un ] [ -m ] [ -l ] [ -M ] [ -L ] [ -t ] [ -i ] [ -o outputfile ] font‐
       file.bdf

DESCRIPTION
       Bdftopcf is a font compiler for the X server and font server.   Fonts  in  Portable  Compiled
       Format can be read by any architecture, although the file is structured to allow one particu‐
       lar architecture to read them directly without reformatting.  This allows fast reading on the
       appropriate  machine,  but  the  files are still portable (but read more slowly) on other ma‐
       chines.

OPTIONS
       -pn     Sets the font glyph padding.  Each glyph in the font will have each  scanline  padded
               in to a multiple of n bytes, where n is 1, 2, 4 or 8.

       -un     Sets the font scanline unit.  When the font bit order is different from the font byte
               order,  the scanline unit n describes what unit of data (in bytes) are to be swapped;
               the unit i can be 1, 2 or 4 bytes.

       -m      Sets the font bit order to MSB (most significant bit) first.   Bits  for  each  glyph
               will  be  placed  in this order; i.e., the left most bit on the screen will be in the
               highest valued bit in each unit.

       -l      Sets the font bit order to LSB (least significant bit) first.  The left most  bit  on
               the screen will be in the lowest valued bit in each unit.

       -M      Sets  the  font  byte  order to MSB first.  All multi-byte data in the file (metrics,
               bitmaps and everything else) will be written most significant byte first.

       -L      Sets the font byte order to LSB first.  All multi-byte data  in  the  file  (metrics,
               bitmaps and everything else) will be written least significant byte first.

       -t      When this option is specified, bdftopcf will convert fonts into "terminal" fonts when
               possible.  A terminal font has each glyph image padded to the same size; the X server
               can usually render these types of fonts more quickly.

       -i      This  option  inhibits  the normal computation of ink metrics.  When a font has glyph
               images which do not fill the bitmap image (i.e., the "on" pixels don't extend to  the
               edges of the metrics) bdftopcf computes the actual ink metrics and places them in the
               .pcf file; the -t option inhibits this behaviour.

       -o output-file-name
               By  default  bdftopcf  writes  the pcf file to standard output; this option gives the
               name of a file to be used instead.

       -v      Print version information and exit.

SEE ALSO
       X(7)

AUTHOR
       Keith Packard, MIT X Consortium

X Version 11                                bdftopcf 1.1                                 BDFTOPCF(1)