BDFTOPCF(1) MachTen Programmer’s Manual BDFTOPCF(1)

NAME
bdftopcf - convert X font from Bitmap Distribution Format
to Portable Compiled Format

SYNOPSIS
bdftopcf [ -pn ] [ -un ] [ -m ] [ -l ] [ -M ] [ -L ] [ -t
] [ -i ] [ -o outputfile ] fontfile.bdf

DESCRIPTION
Bdftopcf is a font compiler for the X server and font
server. Fonts in Portable Compiled Format can be read by
any architecture, although the file is structured to allow
one particular architecture to read them directly without
reformatting. This allows fast reading on the appropriate
machine, but the files are still portable (but read more
slowly) on other machines.

OPTIONS
-pn Sets the font glyph padding. Each glyph in the
font will have each scanline padded in to a multi-
ple of n bytes, where n is 1, 2, 4 or 8.

-un Sets the font scanline unit. When the font bit
order is different from the font byte order, the
scanline unit n describes what unit of data (in
bytes) are to be swapped; the unit i can be 1, 2
or 4 bytes.

-m Sets the font bit order to MSB (most significant
bit) first. Bits for each glyph will be placed in
this order; i.e., the left most bit on the screen
will be in the highest valued bit in each unit.

-l Sets the font bit order to LSB (least significant
bit) first. The left most bit on the screen will
be in the lowest valued bit in each unit.

-M Sets the font byte order to MSB first. All multi-
byte data in the file (metrics, bitmaps and every-
thing else) will be written most significant byte
first.

-L Sets the font byte order to LSB first. All multi-
byte data in the file (metrics, bitmaps and every-
thing else) will be written least significant byte
first.

-t When this option is specified, bdftopcf will con-
vert fonts into "terminal" fonts when possible. A
terminal font has each glyph image padded to the
same size; the X server can usually render these
types of fonts more quickly.

-i This option inhibits the normal computation of ink
metrics. When a font has glyph images which do
not fill the bitmap image (i.e., the "on" pixels
don’t extend to the edges of the metrics) bdftopcf
computes the actual ink metrics and places them in
the .pcf file; the -t option inhibits this
behaviour.

-o output-file-name
By default bdftopcf writes the pcf file to stan-
dard output; this option gives the name of a file
to be used instead.