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Diffstat (limited to 'README.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 62 |
1 files changed, 49 insertions, 13 deletions
@@ -1,12 +1,17 @@ # Gallant Font -This is the Gallant font, as used by the Sun Microsystems SPARCstation -console, extended with glyphs for many Unicode blocks. It is a raster -font with a 22x12 pixel character cell, descent 5 and ascent 17. - -The starting point was the `gallant.hex` file as found on FreeBSD 14, -which contained 502 glyphs at the time. This project currently provides -more than 4500 glyphs. Major additions: +This is the Gallant font, as used by the [Sun +Microsystems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems) +[SPARCstation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation) console, +extended with [glyphs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyph) for many +[Unicode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode) blocks. It is a +[raster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_graphics) font with a +22x12 pixel character cell, descent 5 and ascent 17. + +The starting point was the `gallant.hex` file as found on +[FreeBSD](https://www.freebsd.org/) 14, which contained 502 glyphs at +the time. This project currently provides more than 4500 glyphs. Major +additions: * Greek * Cyrillic @@ -94,7 +99,9 @@ none are present. Codepoints >= U+10000 can be part of a BDF file, but cannot be used by core X11 since it internally restricts glyph encoding numbers to 16 bit. -(This limitation does not apply to **Xft** rendered fonts). +The X server then says `BDF Error on line X: char 'U+10000' has encoding +too large (65536)`. This limitation does not apply to **Xft** rendered +fonts. The FreeBSD [vt(4)](https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=vt&apropos=0&sektion=4) @@ -149,10 +156,13 @@ The Linux console uses [PSF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Screen_Font) fonts. As of 2025 this format can only contain 256 or 512 glyphs. -The NetBSD console is also restricted to 512 glyphs. It does not handle -double width or combining characters. +The [NetBSD console +(wscons)](https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-cons.html) is also +restricted to 512 glyphs. It does not handle double width or combining +characters. -OpenBSD inherited the `wscons` from NetBSD, so similar restrictions apply. +[OpenBSD's wscons](https://man.openbsd.org/wscons) was inherited from +NetBSD, so similar restrictions apply. The glyphs in this gallant project would have to be severely reduced in number to fit. If someone wants to contribute a stripped down font in @@ -196,8 +206,8 @@ retina. ## History -The oldest reference to the Gallant font I could find was in a Copyright -notice in [NetBSD's +The oldest reference to the Gallant font I could find at first was in a +Copyright notice in [NetBSD's gallant12x22.h](https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/src/sys/dev/wsfont/gallant12x22.h) which reads: @@ -218,6 +228,32 @@ In private conversation with the author, Jef said he guessed that the gallant font was designed by someone at Sun Microsystems before it made its way to Berkeley. +The Unix history site [v6sh.org](https://v6sh.org/) has a list of the +[4.4BSD-Alpha src directory +contents](https://tuhs.v6sh.org/UnixArchiveMirror/Distributions/UCB/4.4BSD-Alpha/src.lst) +which contains an `rcons` directory with + +``` +rwxrwxr-x 3/9 0 Jul 25 07:58 1992 usr/src/sys/sparc/rcons/ +rwxrwxr-x 3/9 0 Jul 25 07:58 1992 usr/src/sys/sparc/rcons/tags symbolic link to /var/db/sys_tags +r--r--r-- 3/9 46247 Jul 22 09:49 1992 usr/src/sys/sparc/rcons/gallant19.h +r--r--r-- 3/9 9548 Jul 22 09:50 1992 usr/src/sys/sparc/rcons/raster.h +r--r--r-- 3/9 29785 Jul 22 09:50 1992 usr/src/sys/sparc/rcons/raster_op.c +r--r--r-- 3/9 6870 Jul 22 09:50 1992 usr/src/sys/sparc/rcons/raster_text.c +r--r--r-- 3/9 2840 Jul 22 09:50 1992 usr/src/sys/sparc/rcons/rcons_font.c +r--r--r-- 3/9 7756 Jul 22 09:50 1992 usr/src/sys/sparc/rcons/rcons_kern.c +r--r--r-- 3/9 15437 Jul 22 09:50 1992 usr/src/sys/sparc/rcons/rcons_subr.c +``` + +The relevant C language header file is in +[History/rcons/gallant19.h](History/rcons/gallant19.h). + +The +[4.3BSD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Software_Distribution#4.3BSD) +`src` and `src/sys` tape archives do not contain `gallant19.h`, which +makes it likely it was acquired between 4.3BSD and +[4.4BSD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Berkeley_Software_Distribution#4.4BSD_and_descendants). + ## Remarks Codepoints 0 through 31 contain glyphs of the VT100 line-drawing |