TEXT2FONT(1)

NAME
text2font, font2text - convert between MGR font format and text

SYNOPSIS
text2font <file.txt >file.fnt
font2text <file.fnt >file.txt

AVAILABILITY

text2font is available by anonymous FTP to ftp.lysator.liu.se in file /pub/mgr/text2font.tar.Z. The program is in the public domain. Use it at your own risk. MGR is a window manager by Steven Uhler at Bellcore.

DESCRIPTION

text2font reads a text file representing an MGR font from standard input. It writes the binary MGR font file to standard output. font2text performs the exact inverse of this operation. If you convert your favorite MGR font to text, you can edit it with your favorite text editor, and then convert it back to a font file. This is a poor man's font editor.

The text format is very special, and text files can easily be corrupted beyond recognition. Be careful.

At the top of the file, six decimal values appear separated by white space. These represent, in turn, the type, width, height, base line offset, character count, and start character of the font. The meaning of these parameters are described below, but also in the description of the MGR font format in man page font(5).

Then follows the layout for all characters, one character at a time. The first character will have character value start, which is typically 0 (for NUL) or 32 (for space). There should be exactly count characters in the file. Each character is represented by height rows of width bits each. Each bit is either a one (an asterisk *) or a zero (a dot .).

When converting from this text format to the MGR font file, all other characters, including white space and letters, are ignored. The total number of bits must be exact, or else text2font will complain.

Each character has its base line base positions from the bottom. This is noted, so that MGR will know where to put an underline cursor.

SEE ALSO
mgr(1), font(5)

AUTHOR
text2font was written by Lars Aronsson, Lysator, Linkoping, Sweden <aronsson@lysator.liu.se>. Let me know what you think of these programs, but beware! You use them at your own risk! The programs are in the public domain.