|
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FONT FORMATS | FONT HEIGHT | CONSOLE MAPS | UNICODE FONT MAPS | OPTIONS | NOTE | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
SETFONT(8) International Support SETFONT(8)
setfont - load EGA/VGA console screen font
setfont [-O font+umap.orig] [-o font.orig] [-om cmap.orig] [-ou
umap.orig] [-N] [font.new ...] [-m cmap] [-u umap] [-C console]
[-hH] [-v] [-V]
The setfont command reads a font from the file font.new and loads it
into the EGA/VGA character generator, and optionally outputs the
previous font. It can also load various mapping tables and output
the previous versions.
If no args are given (or only the option -N for some number N), then
a default (8xN) font is loaded (see below). One may give several
small fonts, all containing a Unicode table, and setfont will combine
them and load the union. Typical use:
setfont
Load a default font.
setfont drdos8x16
Load a given font (here the 448-glyph drdos font).
setfont cybercafe -u cybercafe
Load a given font that does not have a Unicode map and provide
one explicitly.
setfont LatArCyrHeb-19 -m 8859-2
Load a given font (here a 512-glyph font combining several
character sets) and indicate that one's local character set is
ISO 8859-2.
Note: if a font has more than 256 glyphs, only 8 out of 16 colors can
be used simultaneously. It can make console perception worse (loss of
intensity and even some colors).
The standard Linux font format is the PSF font. It has a header
describing font properties like character size, followed by the glyph
bitmaps, optionally followed by a Unicode mapping table giving the
Unicode value for each glyph. Several other (obsolete) font formats
are recognized. If the input file has code page format (probably
with suffix .cp), containing three fonts with sizes e.g. 8x8, 8x14
and 8x16, then one of the options -8 or -14 or -16 must be used to
select one. Raw font files are binary files of size 256*N bytes,
containing bit images for each of 256 characters, one byte per scan
line, and N bytes per character (0 < N <= 32). Most fonts have a
width of 8 bits, but with the framebuffer device (fb) other widths
can be used.
The program setfont has no built-in knowledge of VGA video modes, but
just asks the kernel to load the character ROM of the video card with
certain bitmaps. However, since Linux 1.3.1 the kernel knows enough
about EGA/VGA video modes to select a different line distance. The
default character height will be the number N inferred from the font
or specified by option. However, the user can specify a different
character height H using the -h option.
Several mappings are involved in the path from user program output to
console display. If the console is in utf8 mode (see
unicode_start(1)) then the kernel expects that user program output is
coded as UTF-8 (see utf-8(7)), and converts that to Unicode (ucs2).
Otherwise, a translation table is used from the 8-bit program output
to 16-bit Unicode values. Such a translation table is called a
Unicode console map. There are four of them: three built into the
kernel, the fourth settable using the -m option of setfont. An
escape sequence chooses between these four tables; after loading a
cmap, setfont will output the escape sequence Esc ( K that makes it
the active translation.
Suitable arguments for the -m option are for example 8859-1, 8859-2,
..., 8859-15, cp437, ..., cp1250.
Given the Unicode value of the symbol to be displayed, the kernel
finds the right glyph in the font using the Unicode mapping info of
the font and displays it.
Old fonts do not have Unicode mapping info, and in order to handle
them there are direct-to-font maps (also loaded using -m) that give a
correspondence between user bytes and font positions. The most
common correspondence is the one given in the file trivial (where
user byte values are used directly as font positions). Other
correspondences are sometimes preferable since the PC video hardware
expects line drawing characters in certain font positions.
Giving a -m none argument inhibits the loading and activation of a
mapping table. The previous console map can be saved to a file using
the -om file option. These options of setfont render mapscrn(8)
obsolete. (However, it may be useful to read that man page.)
The correspondence between the glyphs in the font and Unicode values
is described by a Unicode mapping table. Many fonts have a Unicode
mapping table included in the font file, and an explicit table can be
indicated using the -u option. The program setfont will load such a
Unicode mapping table, unless a -u none argument is given. The
previous Unicode mapping table will be saved as part of the saved
font file when the -O option is used. It can be saved to a separate
file using the -ou file option. These options of setfont render
loadunimap(8) obsolete.
The Unicode mapping table should assign some glyph to the `missing
character' value U+fffd, otherwise missing characters are not
translated, giving a usually very confusing result.
Usually no mapping table is needed, and a Unicode mapping table is
already contained in the font (sometimes this is indicated by the
.psfu extension), so that most users need not worry about the precise
meaning and functioning of these mapping tables.
One may add a Unicode mapping table to a psf font using
psfaddtable(1).
-h H Override font height.
-m file
Load console map or Unicode console map from file.
-o file
Save previous font in file.
-O file
Save previous font and Unicode map in file.
-om file
Store console map in file.
-ou file
Save previous Unicode map in file.
-u file
Load Unicode table describing the font from file.
-C console
Set the font for the indicated console. (May require root
permissions.)
-v Be verbose.
-V Print version and exit.
PC video hardware allows one to use the "intensity" bit either to
indicate brightness, or to address 512 (instead of 256) glyphs in the
font. So, if the font has more than 256 glyphs, the console will be
reduced to 8 (instead of 16) colors.
@DATADIR@/consolefonts is the default font directory.
@DATADIR@/unimaps is the default directory for Unicode maps.
@DATADIR@/consoletrans is the default directory for screen mappings.
The default font is a file default (or default8xN if the -N option
was given for some number N) perhaps with suitable extension (like
.psf).
psfaddtable(1), unicode_start(1), loadunimap(8), utf-8(7), mapscrn(8)
This page is part of the kbd (Linux keyboard tools) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.kbd-project.org/⟩. If you have a bug report for this man‐
ual page, send it to kbd@lists.altlinux.org. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/legion/kbd.git⟩ on
2017-07-05. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML ver‐
sion of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date
source for the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original man‐
ual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org
11 Feb 2001 SETFONT(8)
Pages that refer to this page: psfaddtable(1), psfgettable(1), psfstriptable(1), psfxtable(1), unicode_start(1), unicode_stop(1), ioctl_console(2), console_codes(4), vconsole.conf(5), charsets(7), loadunimap(8), mapscrn(8), resizecons(8), showconsolefont(8), systemd-vconsole-setup.service(8)