path: root/README.md

# Gallant Font

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 4600 glyphs. Major
additions:

* Greek
* Cyrillic
* International Phonetic Association Extensions
* Extended Latin characters
* Zapf Dingbats
* Tons of arrows
* Tons of mathematical symbols
* Letterlike symbols and enclosed alphanumerics
* Pixel-perfect box drawing
* Currency symbols
* More punctuation
* Just enough Katakana to say コンニチハ
* [Powerline](https://github.com/powerline/powerline) glyphs in the *Private Use Area* at U+e0a0

I have tried hard to keep the look of the font for Greek and Cyrillic
glyphs, but not for symbols like arrows and mathematical operators where
it makes no sense. Please let me know where I messed up (I can only
barely read and write Greek, and hardly any Cyrillic and no Japanese
at all). I used the
documents of *The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0* as guidance.
See [Unicode.org](https://home.unicode.org/) for more on Unicode.

## Unicode Support

In the following table's Status column, *Complete* means all glyphs are
present, *Partial* means at least one glyph is present, *TODO* means
none are present.

|Block          |Name                                                                                   |Status   |
|---------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------|
|U+0000 - U+007F|[Basic Latin](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf)                            |Complete |
|U+0080 - U+00FF|[Latin-1 Supplement](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf)                     |Complete |
|U+0100 - U+017F|[Latin Extended-A](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0100.pdf)                       |Complete |
|U+0180 - U+024F|[Latin Extended-B](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0180.pdf)                       |Complete |
|U+0250 - U+02AF|[IPA Extensions](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0250.pdf)                         |Complete |
|U+02B0 - U+02FF|[Spacing Modifier Letters](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U02B0.pdf)               |Complete |
|U+0300 - U+036F|[Combining Diacritical Marks](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0300.pdf)            |Complete |
|U+0370 - U+03FF|[Greek and Coptic](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0370.pdf)                       |Complete |
|U+0400 - U+04FF|[Cyrillic](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0400.pdf)                               |Complete |
|U+0500 - U+052F|[Cyrillic Supplement](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0500.pdf)                    |Complete |
|U+0530 - U+1CFF|[...Many foreign alphabets...](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0530.pdf)           |TODO     |
|U+1D00 - U+1D7F|[Phonetic Extensions](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D00.pdf)                    |TODO     |
|U+1D80 - U+1DBF|[Phonetic Extensions Supplement](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D80.pdf)         |TODO     |
|U+1DC0 - U+1DFF|[Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1DC0.pdf) |TODO     |
|U+1E00 - U+1EFF|[Latin Extended Additional](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1E00.pdf)              |Complete |
|U+1F00 - U+1FFF|[Greek Extended](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F00.pdf)                         |Complete |
|U+2000 - U+206F|[General Punctuation](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2000.pdf)                    |Complete |
|U+2070 - U+209F|[Superscripts and Subscripts](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2070.pdf)            |Complete |
|U+20A0 - U+20CF|[Currency Symbols](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U20A0.pdf)                       |Complete |
|U+20D0 - U+20FF|[Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U20D0.pdf)|Complete |
|U+2100 - U+214F|[Letterlike Symbols](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2100.pdf)                     |Complete |
|U+2150 - U+218F|[Number Forms](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2150.pdf)                           |Complete |
|U+2190 - U+21FF|[Arrows](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2190.pdf)                                 |Complete |
|U+2200 - U+22FF|[Mathematical Operators](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2200.pdf)                 |Complete |
|U+2300 - U+23FF|[Miscellaneous Technical](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2300.pdf)                |Complete |
|U+2400 - U+243F|[Control Pictures](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2400.pdf)                       |Complete |
|U+2440 - U+245F|[Optical Character Recognition](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2440.pdf)          |Complete |
|U+2460 - U+24FF|[Enclosed Alphanumerics](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2460.pdf)                 |Complete |
|U+2500 - U+257F|[Box Drawing](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2500.pdf)                            |Complete |
|U+2580 - U+259F|[Block Elements](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2580.pdf)                         |Complete |
|U+25A0 - U+25FF|[Geometric Shapes](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U25A0.pdf)                       |Complete |
|U+2600 - U+26FF|[Miscellaneous Symbols](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2600.pdf)                  |Partial  |
|U+2700 - U+27BF|[Dingbats](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2700.pdf)                               |Complete |
|U+27C0 - U+27EF|[Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U27C0.pdf)   |Complete |
|U+27F0 - U+27FF|[Supplemental Arrows-A](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U27F0.pdf)                  |Complete |
|U+2800 - U+28FF|[Braille Patterns](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2800.pdf)                       |Complete |
|U+2900 - U+297F|[Supplemental Arrows-B](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2900.pdf)                  |Complete |
|U+2980 - U+29FF|[Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2980.pdf)   |Complete |
|U+2A00 - U+2AFF|[Supplemental Mathematical Operators](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2A00.pdf)    |TODO     |
|U+2B00 - U+2BFF|[Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2B00.pdf)       |Partial  |
|U+2C00 - U+2C5F|[Glagolitic](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2C00.pdf)                             |TODO     |
|U+2C60 - U+2C7F|[Latin Extended-C](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2C60.pdf)                       |TODO     |
|U+2C80 - U+30BF|[...Many foreign alphabets...](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2C80.pdf)           |TODO     |
|U+30A0 - U+30FF|[Katakana](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U30A0.pdf)                               |Partial  |
|U+3100 - U+A6FF|[...Many foreign alphabets...](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2C80.pdf)           |TODO     |
|U+A700 - U+A71F|[Modifier Tone Letters](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UA700.pdf)                  |TODO     |
|U+A720 - U+A7FF|[Latin Extended-D](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UA720.pdf)                       |TODO     |
|U+A800 - U+AB2F|[...Many foreign alphabets...](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UA800.pdf)           |TODO     |
|U+AB30 - U+AB6F|[Latin Extended-E](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UAB30.pdf)                       |TODO     |
|U+AB70 - U+FAFF|[...Many foreign alphabets...](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UAB70.pdf)           |TODO     |
|U+FB00 - U+FB4F|[Alphabetic Presentation Forms](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFB00.pdf)          |Partial  |
|U+FB50 - U+FFEF|[...Many foreign alphabets...](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFB50.pdf)           |TODO     |
|U+FFF0 - U+FFFF|[Specials](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFFF0.pdf)                               |Complete |

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.
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)
driver works fine with the full 32 bit codepoint range.

## How does it look?

The [Images](Images) directory contains white-on-black and
black-on-white (suffixed `-Inverted`) PNG image files for the separate
blocks and [Markus Kuhn's](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/)
[UTF-8-demo.txt](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/UTF-8-demo.txt),
licensed [CC BY](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/); no changes
were made to the text before rendering it in Gallant.

## How do I use this GNUmakefile?

If you just want to use one of the `gallant.*` font files, you don't
need to build anything. See "How do I load/use this font?" below.

If you want to modify or add glyphs, edit `gallant.src` and then `make`.

You will obviously need GNU make (FreeBSD: `devel/gmake`). To build the
TrueType `gallant.ttf` you will need FontForge (`print/fontforge`). To
build images with `txttopng` the PNG library is required
(`graphics/png`).

## How do I load/use this font?

### As an X11 Raster Font, e.g. for Xterm(1)

Install the BDF file `gallant.bdf` or the PCF file `gallant.pcf.gz`
where X11 looks for fonts. You can query the current font path with
`xset q | sed -n '/^Font/,/^ /p'`. If you do not have write permission
to any of the font directories, you may create your own under, say,
`$HOME/.fonts`.

The following example uses `$HOME/.fonts` as the font directory and adds
it to the font path. To make the font path addition permanent, you
should add the `xset` lines to your `$HOME/.xinitrc` or equivalent X11
startup file (common candidates are `.xsession` and `.xprofile`).

```
mkdir -p $HOME/.fonts
cp gallant.bfd $HOME/.fonts
cd $HOME/.fonts
mkfontdir
xset fp+ $HOME/.fonts
xset fp rehash
xterm -fa '' -fn "-sun-gallant-medium-r-normal-*-22-*-*-*-*-80-*-*"
```

### FreeBSD Console

```
vidcontrol -f /path/to/gallant.fnt
```

You may also drop the font files into directory `/usr/share/vt/fonts` and
add `allscreens_flags="-f gallant"` to your `/etc/rc.conf`. This way all
console terminals use the font after boot.

### FreeBSD Loader

For the full Gallant boot experience, make the loader use `12x22.fnt.gz`
early:
* Copy it to `/boot/fonts/12x22.fnt.gz`.
* Add `screen.font="12x22"` (without `.fnt.gz`) to `/boot/loader.conf`.
* Make sure that `/boot/fonts/INDEX.fonts` contains these lines,
  preferably after the `11x22.fnt:` entries.
  ```
  12x22.fnt:en:Gallant BSD Console, size 22
  12x22.fnt:da:Gallant BSD-konsol, størrelse 22
  12x22.fnt:de:Gallant BSD Console, Größe 22
  ```
* For even more Sun Microsystems reminiscence, switch to black on white.
  In `/boot/loader.conf` set `teken.fg_color="0"` and `teken.bg_color="7"`.
* To use the FreeBSD logo with inverted colors, edit `/boot/lua/drawer.lua`.
  Look for the assignment
  `image = "/boot/images/freebsd-brand-rev.png"` and replace it with
  `image = "/boot/images/freebsd-brand.png"`.

### Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD Console

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
(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'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
the appropriate format, I'm willing to add it to this project.

### The TrueType gallant.ttf

The `gallant.ttf` file is a conversion from BDF to TTF using
[FontForge](https://fontforge.org/en-US/). (See the
[GNUmakefile](GNUmakefile) for the scripted command sequence.) A TTF
font can contain a raster font at its design size; sometimes this is
called a *bit strike*. On systems supporting TrueType you may be able to
use Gallant. The font family name is `Gallant12` to disambiguate it from
`gallant` and to indicate that the design size is 12. Usage example with
xterm:

```
xterm -fa Gallant12:size=12
```

You *can* use a larger `size` value, but that will only affect the line
spacing, not the glyph size. Visually this is most apparent in the box
drawing characters, where there will be vertical gaps. The same applies
to all glyphs that connect to glyphs above and below, such as large
parentheses, braces, brackets, integrals, etc.

### The TrueType gallant.ttf does not work on Windows. What's going on?

The symptom is that Windows displays a popup along "gallant.ttf is not a
valid font file" when you want to copy `gallant.ttf` to
`C:\Windows\Fonts` or install it some other way.

There seem to be at least two issues.

1. I'm told Windows considers a font invalid if it does not contain
   a certain set of six Hiragana glyphs. I have added them to the BDF
   but this is not enough to solve the "gallant.ttf is not a valid
   font file" popup.
2. Windows wants a scalable outline font. A bitmap-only TrueType font
   file is invalid. I have yet to find an automated way, preferably
   with `fontforge` script commands, to add an outline font with
   a square pixel for each pixel.

### Is there a gallant.fon for Windows?

No. The `fon` file format, dated as it is, does not support Unicode and
would only contain 256 glyphs.

## Who are you?

I'm an ex-Sun Microsystems software engineer who had a stint in the
company shortly before Oracle took over (2008/2009). I was nowhere near
the OpenBoot PROM files which contained the Gallant font. My first
contact with SUN hardware was in the early 90's at university with the
3/60 and the SPARCstations. It was then and there that the Gallant font
and the Trinitron CRT raster were burnt in my retina.

## How did you edit the glyphs?

With a text editor (vim). I wrote the [`hextosrc`](hextosrc.c) utility
which turns `gallant.hex` into a human readable file named `gallant.src`
with one character cell per pixel, a row count from 22 down to 1 so I
know where the baseline (06) is and each pixel row between `|`
characters (12 or 24, space for pixel not set, full block `█` for set).
My [`srctohex`](srctohex.c) utility converts in the opposite direction.

This is what the glyph for A looks like in `gallant.src`:

```
STARTCHAR U0041 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A
22 |            |
21 |            |
20 |            |
19 |     ██     |
18 |     ██     |
17 |    █ ██    |
16 |    █ ██    |
15 |    █  █    |
14 |   █   ██   |
13 |   █   ██   |
12 |   █    █   |
11 |  ████████  |
10 |  █     ██  |
09 |  █      █  |
08 | █       ██ |
07 | █       ██ |
06 |███     ████|
05 |            |
04 |            |
03 |            |
02 |            |
01 |            |
ENDCHAR
```

The row numbers and Unicode names are ignored by `srctohex`, and
inserted/restored by `hextosrc`. This allows to freely add and delete
pixel rows without tedious row renumbering or knowing the Unicode name.

The utilites are complemented by [`hextobdf`](hextobdf.c) to generate
`gallant.bdf`. From there, other tools can create additional font formats.

## History

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:

```
/*
 * Copyright (c) 1992, 1993
 *     The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
 *
 * This code is derived from software contributed to the Computer Systems
 * Engineering Group at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and to the University
 * of California at Berkeley by Jef Poskanzer.
 * [...]
 * Derived from: @(#)gallant19.h	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/11/93
 */
```

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.

Further research examining the Unix history site
[v6sh.org](https://v6sh.org/) revealed 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 these files:

```
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
```

Gallant's 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).

After asking in the usenet newsgroup comp.sys.sun.hardware—16
years after Sun was acquired by Oracle people *do* lurk
there—some helpful soul reached out to me with links to [the
openboot gallant
font](https://github.com/openbios/openboot/blob/master/obp/pkg/termemu/gallant.fth)
and a PDF titled [From the Valley of Heart's Delight to the Silicon
Valley: A Study of Stanford University's Role in the
Transformation](http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/97/1579/CS-TR-97-1579.pdf)
by Carolyn Tajnai which in Appendix A reveals as the designer of the
Gallant font no one less than Stanford professor Vaughan Pratt, who also
designed the iconic Sun logo.

## Remarks

Codepoints 0 through 31 contain glyphs of the VT100 line-drawing
character set othwise known as the [DEC Special Character and Line
Drawing Set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Special_Graphics). They
were left unmodified to not change their intended use by applications
that expect them there. Each of the special characters also has an
"official" Unicode codepoint. Contemporary applications should never
need to render them. This is the mapping:

|Special |Official |Name |
|--------|---------|---------|
|U+0000  |U+25AE   |black vertical rectangle |
|U+0001  |U+25C6   |black diamond |
|U+0002  |U+2592   |medium shade |
|U+0003  |U+2409   |symbol for horizontal tabulation |
|U+0004  |U+240C   |symbol for form feed |
|U+0005  |U+240D   |symbol for carriage return |
|U+0006  |U+240A   |symbol for line feed |
|U+0007  |U+00B0   |degree sign |
|U+0008  |U+00B1   |plus-minus sign |
|U+0009  |U+2424   |symbol for newline |
|U+000a  |U+240B   |symbol for vertical tabulation |
|U+000b  |U+2518   |box drawings light up and left |
|U+000c  |U+2510   |box drawings light down and left |
|U+000d  |U+250C   |box drawings light down and right |
|U+000e  |U+2514   |box drawings light up and right |
|U+000f  |U+253C   |box drawings light vertical and horizontal |
|U+0010  |U+23BA   |box drawings scan 1 |
|U+0011  |U+23BB   |box drawings scan 3 |
|U+0012  |U+2500   |box drawings light horizontal |
|U+0013  |U+23BC   |box drawings scan 7 |
|U+0014  |U+23BD   |box drawings scan 9 |
|U+0015  |U+251C   |box drawings light vertical and right |
|U+0016  |U+2524   |box drawings light vertical and left |
|U+0017  |U+2534   |box drawings light up and horizontal |
|U+0018  |U+252C   |box drawings light down and horizontal |
|U+0019  |U+2502   |box drawings light vertical |
|U+001a  |U+2264   |less-than or equal to |
|U+001b  |U+2265   |greater-than or equal to |
|U+001c  |U+03C0   |greek small letter pi |
|U+001d  |U+2260   |not equal to |
|U+001e  |U+00A3   |pound sign |
|U+001f  |U+00B7   |middle dot |

## TODO

* Describe how to contribute.
* Commit 12x22 for loader use to FreeBSD once code slush is over.