vt(4) "newcons" and 80x25 vty? (tested: 10.1-BETA2)

[beeessdee at ruggedinbox.com]

On Mon, 20 Oct 2014 10:59:27 -0400, Ed Maste <emaste at freebsd.org> wrote:

> In fact, good documentation is even more important for new subsystems.
> Anyhow, as a result of your comment I noticed that a vtfontcvt(8)
> cross-reference was missing from vt(4); it's now added to HEAD in
> r273332.

THANK YOU!

Comprehensive and well-written manuals are one of best aspects of
FreeBSD.  I like "RTFM", but so many others (ahem) say "check the
wiki (yawn)" or "JFGY".  So please do know, some of us appreciate
those manual pages very much!

Convenient link for those not want check out HEAD:

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=vtfontcvt&apropos=0&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+11-current&arch=default&format=html

> I've also put a quick example in the wiki
> (https://wiki.freebsd.org/Newcons) of using vtfontcvt(8) to create a
> larger console font, and include it here for feedback:
>
> 1. Fetch the Terminus font distribution and unpack it.  It's available from
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/terminus-font/files/latest/download?source=files

The Sourceforge link give .exe file (self-extracting?  !?!?).  Try this:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/terminus-font/files/terminus-font-4.39/terminus-font-4.39.tar.gz/download

Of course this link is 4.39 only, not tracking later version.

> 2. Convert the 16x32 bitmap .bdf files to a vt(4) .fnt file:
> % vtfontcvt -w 16 -h 32 ter-u32n.bdf ter-u32b.bdf ter-u32.fnt
>
> 3. Load it from a console window to test:
> % vidcontrol -f ter-u32.fnt
>
> On my 1920x1200 LCD this font gives me a 120x37 terminal.

I intend try this and explore different options when I have test
system available, then report back to this thread.  Maybe a few
days, sorry.

As I understand, is the format one bit per pixel, high bit to low bit?
I previously played with this, wrote some C code to draw simple graphics
on screen by loading 256 char font with shapes as a kludge.  I lost
sources in a disk crash - but if vt(4) has same format, it will be
easy to enjoy tinkering with it for actual fonts, as time permits!

> A variant of Terminus is used as the default vt(4) console font, but
> only the 8x16 size is available to us under a BSD license. A future
> task is to integrate this with the terminus-font port, so that
> installing the port or package is sufficient to make the full set of
> sizes available to vt(4).

I am not familiar with Terminus.  Too bad the licence issue.  It's
good for base system to have these things.

Any chance to use TeX fonts?  IIRC many have liberal licensing.
Metafont give bitmap, but I don't remember its output format.
These tend to be print-oriented (not good for screen view), but
also I think many people made Metafonts for different languages
and scripts.  This is the older fonts, some from 1980s; nowadays
most TeX system take OpenType and similar, to make the PDF.  Just
another thing I just need time to try!

Thanks also to others who replied.  I want reply in this thread
when I have some substance result, maybe helpful to others.