Table of Contents
gbdfed - GTK-based BDF font editor
gbdfed [options] [fonts ...]
gbdfed lets you interactively create new bitmap font files
or modify existing ones. It allows editing multiple fonts and multiple
glyphs, it allows cut and paste operations between fonts and glyphs and
editing font properties. gbdfed can import Metafont PK/GF fonts, Han Bitmap
Font Format (HBF) fonts, Linux console fonts (PSF, CP, and EGA/VGA) fonts,
Sun VF fonts, OpenType/TrueType (OTF/TTF) fonts, or grab a font from the
X server (when running under X11). gbdfed can export PSF2 Linux console
fonts and HEX fonts (see online help).
gbdfed works on X Window System
Version 11 (X11), Release 5 or 6, with GTK+ 2.6 or greater. It may work on
Windows, but hasn’t been tested yet.
gbdfed accepts the following
command line arguments:
- -nc
- do not preserve comments (by default, gbdfed
automatically collects comments that are saved with the font).
- -nu
- do not
preserve unencoded glyphs (by default, gbdfed preserves the unencoded glyphs).
- -nm
- do not make metrics corrections (by default, gbdfed attempts to make
metrics corrections automatically).
- -np
- do not pad character-cell bitmaps
(by default, gbdfed pads character-cell bitmaps with 0’s to the cell dimensions
when the font is saved).
- -bp
- allow blank pages (by default, gbdfed skips
blank pages).
- -ed
- do not present the "Really Exit?" dialog (by default, this
dialog always presented).
- -ps n
- set default point size (if unspecified,
gbdfed sets it to 12).
- -hres n
- set default horizontal resolution.
- -vres n
- set
default vertical resolution.
- -res n
- set both default resolutions (if unspecified,
gbdfed sets both horizontal and vertical resolution to that of display,
(e.g. 90x90 dpi for Sun workstations).
- -sp s
- set the default font spacing ("p"
for Proportional, "m" for Monowidth, or "c" for Character Cell).
- -eol e
- set
the default end-of-line type ("u" for Unix LF, "d" for DOS/Windows CRLF,
or "m" for Macintosh CR). CR)
- -g glyph-code
- specify the initial glyph code
at startup. The glyph code can be specified in decimal, octal, or hex.
Octal numbers must be prefixed with the digit 0, and hex numbers must be
prefixed with one of: 0x, 0X, U+, U-, \u.
- -cb code-base
- specify the code base
used to display the glyphs encodings (can be "octal", "decimal", or "hexadecimal").
At the top of each editor window there are some fields and buttons.
These are:
- The "Font" text field is where the font name
- is set so it can
be edited.
The "Glyph" field is a label that provides some information
about glyph name, encoding, and metrics when a glyph is selected. When
a range of glyphs are selected, this field displays the start and end codes
of the range.
The push buttons are used to navigate through the glyph pages.
The "Previous Page" and "Next Page" buttons normally skip glyph pages
that are empty, but that can be changed using the "Preferences" dialog.
The "Page" field indicates the current glyph page and also allows a specific
page number to be entered. Once a page number is entered, pressing the Return
key will cause the Font Grid to shift to that page. The page number entered
is assumed to be a decimal number.
The "Code" field is provided for situations
where the page number is not known, but the encoding is known. The encoding
entered in this field must be in the base (8, 10, or 16) that is currently
being used to display glyph encodings (see the "View" menu below). Once
the encoding is entered, pressing the Return key will cause the Font Grid
to shift to the page containing the encoding.
The main window of each font
editor is called the Font Grid. Each Font Grid has a clipboard used for
passing glyphs around. This clipboard is called FONTGRID_CLIPBOARD. The
format of the data stored to this clipboard is not documented yet.
When
a glyph has been modified either by the user or by automatic metrics corrections
when the font is loaded, the glyph code above the glyph cell will be highlighted.
The File menu has the following entries:
- New <Ctrl+N>
- This
creates a new font using the current defaults for point size, horizontal
and vertical resolution, and font spacing.
- Open <Ctrl+O>
- This opens a new
font in the current Font Grid. If the font in the grid has been modified,
the option to save the font before loading a new one will be given.
- Save
<Ctrl+S>
- Save the current font. If the current font does not have a file
name, a file selection dialog will pop up so a file name can be entered.
When the font is saved, it will automatically generate a list of _XFREE86_GLYPH_RANGE
properties containing a list of glyph codes available in the font.
- Save
As <Ctrl+W>
- Save the current font with some other name.
When the font is saved, it will automatically generate a list of _XFREE86_GLYPH_RANGE
properties containing a list of glyph codes available in the font.
The Import
submenu of the File menu has the following entries:
- PK/GF Font <Ctrl+K>
- Import a Metafont PK or GF font.
- Console Font <Ctrl+L>
- Import a binary console
font used by Linux and Sun (PSF1, PSF2, CP, vfont, and other font formats).
- HBF Font <Ctrl+H>
- Import an HBF font. Only available if HBF support is compiled
into gbdfed.
- Windows Font <Ctrl+B>
- Import a Windows FON/FNT font. This will
also import fonts from .EXE and .DLL files as well.
- OpenType/TrueType Font
<Ctrl+Y>
- Import an OpenType/TrueType font (.otf or .ttf extension) or a TrueType
collection (.ttc extension).
- Server Font <Ctrl+G>
- Import a font from the X
server if running under the X Windowing System.
The Export submenu of the
File menu has the following entries:
- PSF <Ctrl+F>
- This will export the current
BDF font or the currently selected glyphs to a PSF2 font. Glyphs in PSF
fonts are usually arranged in a specific way to make them work properly
with the basic display driver. Many of these fonts come with mapping tables
attached that indicate which Unicode characters a glyph can be used for.
The mapping table allows the console to attempt to display Unicode text.
During the export, an option menu will let you select whether to:
- Export
Font with Mapping Table
Export Font Only
Export Mapping Table Only - Only the first 512 glyphs will be exported to
the font.
- HEX
This will export the current BDF font into the HEX format (see http://czyborra.com/unifont/).
- Exit/Close <Ctrl+F4>
- Exit the program if this is the primary Font Grid or
simply hide (unmap) the current Font Grid window.
The Edit menu has the
following entries:
- Copy <Ctrl+C> or <Button3Down>
- This copies the current selection
to the Font Grid clipboard.
- Cut <Ctrl+X> or <Key>Delete or <Key>BackSpace
- This
copies the current selection to the Font Grid clipboard and then deletes
the selection.
- Paste <Ctrl+V> or <Button2Down>
- This replaces the glyphs starting
at the currently selected position with the Font Grid clipboard.
- Overlay
<Ctrl+Shift+V> or Ctrl<Button2Down>
- This merges the glyphs on the Font Grid
cliboard with the glyphs starting at the currently selected position. This
means that the bitmaps are actually combined together. The names of the
modified glyphs are not changed.
- Insert <Ctrl+Meta+V> or Shift<Button2Down>
- This inserts the glyphs on the Font Grid clipboard in front of the currently
selected position.
- Properties <Ctrl+P>
- This invokes the font property editor.
- Comments <Ctrl+M>
- This invokes the font comments editor.
- Font Info <Ctrl+I>
- This invokes a dialog that allows changes to some of the font information
so these values do not have to be changed using the property editor. These
values include the default character, font device width (for monowidth
and character cell fonts), font ascent and descent, font vertical and horizontal
resolution, and the font spacing.
The Font Name submenu of the Edit menu
has the following four entries:
- Make XLFD Name
- If the font does not have
an XLFD name, this will save the current font name in the _ORIGINAL_FONT_NAME
font property and then generate an XLFD name for the font.
- Update Name
From Properties
- This will update the XLFD font name fields from the font
property list.
- Update Properties From Name
- This will update the font properties
from the XLFD font name.
- Update Average Width
- This will update the average
width field of the XLFD font name and will update the AVERAGE_WIDTH font
property as a side effect.
- Name Glyphs
- Unicode Names
- This will rename all
the glyphs using names taken from a file in the Unicode Character Database
format. This file can be set in the configuration file or set using the
Setup dialog.
- Unicode Values
- This will rename all the glyphs with a hexadecimal
value prefixed by 0x, U+, or \u (example: 0x010D, U+010D, \u010D).
- Test Glyphs
<Ctrl+Z>
- This will toggle the glyph test dialog on or off for the editor.
When this is active, selecting a glyph from any Font Grid will also add
it to the glyph test dialog. When changes are made to a glyph or the font
bounding box, the glyph test dialog will be updated accordingly.
The glyph
test dialog provides a toggle to turn the baseline on or off and another
toggle to draw from right to left instead of left to right.
- Setup <Ctrl+T>
- This will invoke the dialog to edit various settings used by the editor
such as the default point size, resolution and font spacing.
The View menu
has the following entries:
- Unencoded <Ctrl+E>
- This will toggle between displaying
the unencoded (glyphs with an ENCODING field of -1) and encoded glyphs.
- Code
Base
- Selects displaying of glyph encoding. Options are Octal (base 8),
Decimal (base 10) or Hexadecimal (base 16).
- Other Page <Ctrl+Shift+S>
- This
will toggle between the current page and the last page that was viewed.
- Vertical View <Ctrl+Q>
- This will toggle the FontGrid between showing the
glyphs horizontally (default) and vertically.
- Messages <Ctrl+A>
- This will
show messages generated when corrections to the font metrics are done or
errors are encountered.
The Operations menu has the following entries:
- Translate
<Ctrl+D>
- This will bring up the dialog for entering the X offset and Y offset
used to translate the glyph to a new location.
The option of translating
the selected glyphs or all of the glyphs is provided.
- Rotate <Ctrl+R>
- This
will bring up the dialog for entering the rotation angle. The rotation
is limited to between plus or minus 1 and 359 degrees.
The option of rotating
the selected glyphs or all of the glyphs is provided.
- Shear <Ctrl+J>
- This
will bring up the dialog for entering theangle of the shear. The shear
is limited to plus or minus 45 degrees.
The option of rotating the selected
glyphs or all of the glyphs is provided.
- Embolden <Ctrl+Shift+B>
- This will
bring up the dialog for emboldening either the selected or all glyphs.
To
embolden means to make bold.
The Editors menu has the following entries:
- New <Ctrl+N>
- This will cause a new editor to be created using the point size,
resolution, and bits per pixel set in the config file, from the command
line or from the Setup dialog.
- [editor list]
- The remaining menu items are
all the Font Grid’s that have been created. Choosing one will force that
window to be made visible (mapped) and also put that window on top.
Double clicking the mouse on one of the glyphs will
start a Glyph Editor for that glyph.
The font name can be edited in the
Font Grid and page switching can be done with the buttons on the Font Grid.
The Glyph Editor provides a simple bitmap editor designed
to edit glyph bitmaps and other glyph information. The Glyph Editors all
use a special clipboard used to pass bitmaps between the Glyph Editors.
This clipboard is called GLYPHEDIT_CLIPBOARD.
The only limit on the number
of Glyph Editors that can be open at one time is the amount of memory.
The File menu has the following entries:
- Update <Ctrl+S>
- This will update the Font Grid with the modified glyph.
There is a button to the right of the Glyph Name field that does this.
- Update and Next
<Ctrl+U>
- This will update the FontGrid with the modified glyph and move to
the next glyph.
- Update and Previous <Ctrl+B>
- This will update the FontGrid
with the modified glyph and move to the previous glyph.
- Close <Ctrl+F4>
- This
will close the Glyph Editor.
The Edit menu has the following entries:
- Reload
<Ctrl+L>
- This will reload the glyph and discard any changes made in the GlyphEditor.
- Copy <Ctrl+C>
- This will copy the currently selected portion of the bitmap
to the Glyph Editor clipboard.
- Cut <Ctrl+X>
- This will copy the currently selected
portion of the bitmap to the Glyph Editor clipboard and then delete the
selection.
- Paste <Ctrl+V>
- This will paste the contents of the Glyph Editor
clipboard into the current Glyph Editor with the top-left coordinate of
the bitmap on the clipboard pasted at the location of the mouse. If the
bitmap is too big to fit if it is pasted at the mouse location, the bitmap
will be shifted until it fits completely in the Glyph Editor.
- Select All
<Ctrl+A>
- This will select the whole glyph bitmap.
- Next Glyph <Ctrl+N>
- This will
move the Glyph Editor to the next glyph position in the Font Grid. If the
current glyph has been modified, a save prompt will appear before moving
to the next glyph.
There is a button to the right of the Glyph Name field that does this.
- Previous Glyph <Ctrl+P>
- This will move the Glyph Editor
to the previous glyph position in the Font Grid. If the current glyph has
been modified, a save prompt will appear before moving to the previous
glyph.
There is a button to the right of the Glyph Name field that does this.
The Operation menu has the following entries:
- Draw <Ctrl+D>
- Change
the Glyph Editor into Draw mode.
- Move <Ctrl+M>
- Change the Glyph Editor into
Move mode. Move mode allows selecting a portion of the glyph bitmap and
moving it to another location.
- Copy <Ctrl+Y>
- Change the Glyph Editor into
Copy mode. Copy mode allows copying a portion of the glyph bitmap and moving
it to another location.
- Rotate <Ctrl+T>
- This will invoke the rotation dialog
that allows the degrees of rotation to be specified. Rotation can be between
1 and 359 degrees.
- Shear <Ctrl+E>
- This will invoke the shear dialog that allows
the degrees of horizontal shear to be specified. Other names for shearing
are obliquing or slanting. Shearing is allowed between 1 and 45 degrees.
- Embolden <Ctrl+H>
- This will embolden the glyph in a simple manner.
- Resize
BBX <Ctrl+R>
- This will allow changing the sizes of the glyph bounding box
including the left/right bearings and the glyph ascent/descent. If this
change causes the glyph bounding box to be larger than the font bounding
box, the font bounding box will be resized when the glyph is saved next.
- Edit PSF Unicode Mappings <Ctrl+F>
- This allows adding, deleting and editing
of Unicode mappings for fonts that will be exported as PSF fonts. The code
valued entered are expected to be in hexadecimal.
When
the mouse is used to shift the bitmap by one of the buttons, holding the
mouse down will cause the activity to repeat.
xfed(1)
,
bdftopcf(1)
, bdftosnf(1)
, psfaddtable(1)
, psfgettable(1)
, fontforge(1)
Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF) Specification, Application Note
5005, Adobe System Inc, 1993
X Logical Font Description, X Consortium
Ross Patterson
for his HBF code.
der Mouse for his "getbdf" code.
K. Carothers and A. Korobka for their "fnt2bdf" code in Wine.
Mike Stroyan
<mike_stroyan@fc.hp.com> for patches.
Primoz Peterlin <primoz.peterlin@biofiz.mf.uni-lj.si> for this manual page.
Danny Backx <u27113@kb.be> for the LessTif Imakefile.
Donald Page <donaldp@sco.com> for patches.
Michal Szymanski <msz@sirius.astrouw.edu.pl> for problem reports.
Werner Lemberg <a7971428@unet.univie.ac.at> for problem reports.
William F. Maton <wmaton@enterprise.ic.gc.ca> for problem reports.
Ivan Nejgebauer <ian@uns.ns.ac.yu> for problem reports.
Solofo <solofo@mpi-sb.mpg.de> for problem reports.
Dave Bodenstab <imdave@mcs.net> for patches.
W. Chao <wchao@HRZ.Uni-Bielefeld.DE> for Makefile changes and problem report.
Andreas Reuter <ar205@bonzo.geowiss.nat.tu-bs.de> for problem reports.
Leonard Dickens <leonard@saul.hipgraphics.com> for IRIX 6.3 Makefile changes.
Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk> for suggestions.
Jim Knoble <jmknoble@pobox.com> for dialog geometry fixes.
Darren Stuart Embry <dsembr01@ox.slug.louisville.edu> for HP/UX 10.20 X11R6 Makefile
additions.
Vladimir Volovich <vvv@vvv.vsu.ru> for pointing out something I forgot to test.
Ben Fry <fry@media.mit.edu> for IRIX 6.5.2 variables for the Makefile.
J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) <jdassen@debian.org> for bug fixes.
Robert Brady <rwb197@ecs.soton.ac.uk> for pointing out a problem.
Stefan Monnier <monnier@cs.yale.edu> for a bug report.
Humphrey Clerx <humphrey.clerx@eurocontrol.be> for a bug report.
Rudolf Cejka <cejkar@dcse.fee.vutbr.cz> for bug fixes and a suggestion.
Baruch Even <baruch@ev-en.org> for a bug fix.
Sergey Vlasov <vsu@mivlgu.murom.ru> for bug fixes.
Daniel Neuburger <daniel.neuburger@lmco.com> for bug fixes.
Pierre HANSER <Pierre.Hanser@sxb.bsf.alcatel.fr> for a bug fix.
Patrick Hagglund <patrik.hagglund@bredband.net> for FreeType 2 support.
James Cloos <cloos@jhcloos.com> for pointing out problems.
Ming Hua <minghua@rice.edu> for pointing out problems.
Viktor Urban <viktor@icc-atcsolutions.com> for pointing out problems.
Jiri "BlueBear" Dluhos <modry.medved@seznam.cz> for providing 64-bit fixes.
Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@linux01.gwdg.de> help text improvements and missing
prototype.
Daniel Richard G. <skunk@iSKUNK.ORG> for help on 64-bit architectures.
Baruch Even <baruch@ev-en.org> for help on 64-bit architectures.
Ming Hua <minghua.debian@gmail.com> for an unsuspected warning.
Ryan Hill <dirtyepic@gentoo.org> for import dialog crash report.
Tim Allen <screwtape@froup.com> for discovering glyph and font spacing
bugs.
Daniel Quarras <dqarras@yahoo.com> for discovering a PSF unicode map
editing problem.
Mark Leisher <mleisher@gmail.com>
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