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restorefont(1)                Svgalib User Manual               restorefont(1)


NAME

       restorefont - save or restore the SVGA font for textmode.


SYNOPSIS

       restorefont {-r|-w} filename


DESCRIPTION

       The font used by SVGA when in textmode is written to or restored from
       filename using the vga_gettextfont(3) and  vga_puttextfont(3)
       functions.


FILE FORMAT

       The VGA font file filename has the following format:

              Offset:
                 0 -   31  Character 0
                  ...          ...
              8164 - 8195  Character 255

       Each row of a character bitmap is stored as a byte (8 pixels).  The
       space that is left from the 32-byte buffer for each character is
       ignored, e.g. a 16 line font uses only offsets 0 - 15 of each
       character.

       Linux textmode screen resolutions:

       80x25    16 line font  400 scanlines
       80x28    14 line font  400 scanlines
       80x50     8 line font  400 scanlines

       The font sizes and resolutions of extended textmodes depend on the
       video card type and BIOS:

       132x25   14 line font  350 scanlines (ugly)
       132x25   16 line font  400 scanlines
       132x43    8 line font  350 scanlines (use fix132x43 to fix/improve)
       132x50    8 line font  400 scanlines

       Using a font that has less lines per character than the textmode works,
       but the characters are smaller. Using a font that is bigger than the
       textmode font results in the bottom part of characters being cut off.

       The svgalib distribution contains sample fonts with 8, 14 and 16 line
       characters in the files utils/font8, utils/font14, and utils/font16.

       The convfont (1) program can be used to convert fonts straightforwardly
       stored character-after-character (i.e. each character only uses
       8/14/whatever bytes), to the 32-byte per character format that
       restorefont requires.

       The purpose of this program is usually to recover from a crashed
       console due to an svgalib, Xfree or other program bug. First save the
       state of the SVGA card when on a text console. After the crash restore
       this state. The savetextmode(1) and textmode(1) script makes this
       procedure very easy.

       The national/fontpak packages, which include kernel patches, allow
       different textmode fonts to be used in different virtual consoles.
       These have been superseded by the kbd package (in the kernel since
       ages). See the setfont(8) utility of the kbd package as a starting
       point.

       Recent kernels support up to 2 fonts with 512 chars each. Recent
       versions of svgalib take this into account and extend the size of the
       datafile accordingly.


OPTIONS

       -w filename
              write the font to the file filename.

       -r filename
              restore the font from the file filename.


SEE ALSO

       svgalib(7), vgagl(7), libvga.config(5), setfont(8), vga_gettextfont(3),
       vga_puttextfont(3), dumpreg(1), convfont(1), fix132x43(1),
       restoretextmode(1), restorepalette(1), runx(1), savetextmode(1),
       setmclk(1), textmode(1).


AUTHOR

       This manual page was edited by Michael Weller <eowmob@exp-math.uni-
       essen.de>. The exact source of the referenced utility as well as of the
       original documentation is unknown.

       It is very likely that both are at least to some extent are due to Harm
       Hanemaayer <H.Hanemaayer@inter.nl.net>.

       Occasionally this might be wrong. I hereby asked to be excused by the
       original author and will happily accept any additions or corrections to
       this first version of the svgalib manual.

Svgalib (>= 1.2.11)               2 Aug 1997                    restorefont(1)

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