NAME

       Unifont - A bitmapped font with full Unicode Plane 0 (BMP) coverage

SYNOPSIS

       unifont.hex

DESCRIPTION

       Unifont  is  a  bitmapped  font  with  glyphs  described in a plain text file, generically
       referred to as unifont.hex herein.  This man page describes the format  of  three  related
       files:  unifont.hex,  masks.hex, and combining.txt.  All three of these files start with a
       Unicode code point as a hexadecimal string, with code points appearing in ascending order.

       A unifont.hex file consists of single-line entries for each Unicode code point.  Each line
       contains  the code point, a colon (':') field separator, and the glyph bitmap.  The glyphs
       in a unifont.hex format file must appear in ascending Unicode code point order.

       This file can be converted into a BDF font using the  hex2bdf  (1)  program,  and  into  a
       TrueType  font  using fontforge (1) (which is not part of this package).  The BDF font can
       also be converted into a PCF font using bdftopcf (1) (which  is  also  not  part  of  this
       package).

       The first field
              The  first  field  is  the  Unicode  code point in hexadecimal, ranging from "0000"
              through "FFFF", inclusive.  This corresponds to  the  Unicode  code  points  U+0000
              through U+FFFF, respectively.

       The second field
              The  second  field  is  the glyph's bitmap string.  This is a series of hexadecimal
              digits.  Currently Unifont encodes two glyph sizes: 8 pixels wide by 16 pixels tall
              (single-width), and 16 pixels wide by 16 pixels tall (double-width).

              As  each hexadecimal digit can encode four bits, one pixel row of a glyph is either
              two hexadecimal digits long (single-width) or four hexadecimal digits long (double-
              width).   The  glyphs  are  16 pixels tall, so a single-width glyph is (2)(16) = 32
              hexadecimal digits long and a double-width glyph is (4)(16) = 64 hexadecimal digits
              long.

       Previous versions of this package supplied a file named masks.hex.  This file followed the
       same format as  unifont.hex  with  a  first  field  that  was  a  Unicode  code  point  in
       hexadecimal,  followed  by  a colon (':') field separator, followed by a second field that
       was a hexadecimal string representing a glyph  bitmap.   Code  points  were  in  ascending
       order.   The  glyph  bitmaps  were  bitmaps that would be exclusive-ored with the glyph in
       unifont.hex that had the same code point.  The original  unifont.hex  contained  combining
       circles  as depicted in The Unicode Standard.  When Paul Hardy got combining characters to
       display properly in the TrueType version, it became desirable to  remove  these  combining
       circles  for  proper display with unifont.ttf.  The program uniunmask (1) will read such a
       masks.hex file, read a unifont.hex format  file,  and  apply  the  exclusive-or  masks  in
       masks.hex  to  unifont.hex.   The  output  is  another file in unifont.hex format with the
       masked-off bits (i.e., combining circles) removed.

       Because the operation is an exclusive-or, masks.hex could also be used to turn  on  pixels
       in  selective glyphs, for example to add combining circles to selective glyphs that do not
       show them.  However, the  program  unigencircles  (1)  can  do  this  without  a  separate
       masks.hex  file.   Thus  masks.hex is no longer supplied with this package.  uniunmask (1)
       remains part of this distribution in case someone might find creating a  custom  masks.hex
       file useful for another purpose.

       The TrueType version of the font, unifont.ttf, and the unigencircles (1) utility both read
       a file combining.txt.  This file appears in the directory font/ttfsrc.  The  combining.txt
       file  is a list of code points as hexadecimal strings, one per line in ascending order, of
       Unicode code points that show combining circles in The Unicode Standard.  Any  glyph  with
       its code point listed in combining.txt will have zero width in unifont.ttf.

UTILITIES

       Roman  Czyborra,  the  font's  creator,  originally  wrote  two Perl scripts as utilities:
       bdfimplode (1) and hexdraw (1).

       The bdfimplode (1) Perl script reads in a font in BDF format and generates a  font  output
       in unifont.hex format.

       The  hexdraw  (1)  Perl  script  might  appear  somewhat  magical.   It can read a file in
       unifont.hex format and generate a text file  with  each  glyph  appearing  as  a  grid  of
       characters in an 8 by 16 or 16 by 16 grid: a '-' character indicates a corresponding white
       pixel, and a '#' character indicates a corresponding black pixel.  These pixel  grids  are
       indented.   The  first  line  shows the code point for a glyph, followed by a colon (':').
       This text file can then be modified with any text editor.  The magical part about  hexdraw
       (1)  is  that  it will read in this text file, detect that it is in this converted format,
       and produce as  output  a  second  file  in  Unifont's  .hex  format.   Thus  hexdraw  (1)
       automagically  provides  round-trip  coverage between an original font file in unifont.hex
       format and an intermediate text graphics format for editing.

       Utilities introduced after those first two convert a file in  unifont.hex  format  to  and
       from  bitmapped  graphics  (".bmp")  files.  The unihex2bmp (1) program converts a file in
       unifont.hex format into a .bmp format file, for  editing  with  a  graphics  editor.   The
       unibmp2hex  (1)  program performs the reverse conversion, from a bitmapped graphics format
       back to a file in unifont.hex format.

       hexdraw (1), unihex2bmp (1), and unibmp2hex (1)  are  the  central  programs  that  handle
       conversion  of  a  unifont.hex  file to and from two-dimensional glyph representations for
       visual editing.  See the TUTORIAL file included in the source pakcage for more information
       on  these and other utilities to customize unifont.hex format files.  Also consult the man
       pages for the utilities listed below.

FILES

       The following files are part of the Unifont source distribution:

       font/plane00/*.hex
                      GNU Unifont font files

       LICENSE        The Unifont license

       README         Instructions on building Unifont

       TUTORIAL       Tutorial on customizing Unifont

SEE ALSO

       bdfimplode(1),   hex2bdf(1),   hex2sfd(1),   hexbraille(1),    hexdraw(1),    hexkinya(1),
       hexmerge(1),  johab2ucs2(1),  unibdf2hex(1), unibmp2hex(1), unibmpbump(1), unicoverage(1),
       unidup(1),   unifont-viewer(1),    unifont1per(1),    unifontchojung(1),    unifontksx(1),
       unifontpic(1),    unigencircles(1),    unigenwidth(1),    unihex2bmp(1),    unihex2png(1),
       unihexfill(1), unihexgen(1), unihexrotate(1), unipagecount(1), unipng2hex(1)

AUTHOR

       The unifont.hex format was created by Roman Czyborra, who drew the original set of glyphs.

LICENSE

       unifont is Copyright © 1998 Roman Czyborra,  with  portions  Copyright  ©  2007–2013  Paul
       Hardy, Copyright © 2004–2013 Qianqian Fang, and others.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the GNU General Public License as  published  by  the  Free  Software  Foundation;  either
       version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

BUGS

       The format is very straihtforward and no real bugs exist.  However, Unifont's original BDF
       font format does not support Unicode's combining  characters  (accents,  etc.);  only  the
       TrueType version of Unifont does.

                                           2013 Sep 27                                 UNIFONT(5)