NAME

       bdf2gdfont.pl - Convert X11 "BDF" fonts into a loadable font format for GD.

SYNOPSIS

         % bdf2gdfont.pl courR12.bdf > courR12.fnt

DESCRIPTION

       This script converts BDF-style X11 font files into a format that can be loaded by the GD
       module using the GD::Font->load() method.  There are a number of ways to obtain BDF fonts.

       1. The font is already present on your system.
           Some BDF fonts can be found in the standard X11R6 distribution. This script will
           automatically uncompress gzipped font files if their extension ends with .gz (the
           gunzip program must be on your path).

       2. From a font server.
           The "fstobdf" utility, a standard X11 utility, will read a named font from the font
           server of your choice and return it in BDF format.  You can pipe it to bdf2gdfont.pl:

             fstobdf -s fontserverhost:7100 -fn 8x16 | bdf2gdfont.pl > newfont.fnt

           Use xlsfonts to find out what fonts are available.  Most fonts will have long names
           like -B&H-LucidaTypewriter-Bold-R-Normal-Sans-18-180-75-75-M-110-ISO8859-10.

       3. Using the pcf2bdf utility.
           Some fonts are only available in PCF (compiled) format.  To obtain these, you can
           either turn on a font server and follow recipe (2), or use TAGA Nayuta's pcf2bdf
           utility. This utility is available from http://www.tsg.ne.jp/GANA/S/pcf2bdf/ (page is
           in Japanese, but you can find the download link).

   Limitations
       This font converter only works with fixed-width fonts.  If used with a TrueType or
       proportional font it will die with an error message.

SEE ALSO

       GD

AUTHOR

       Lincoln Stein <lstein@cshl.org>, heavily adapted from bdftogd from Jan Pazdziora
       <adelton@fi.muni.cz>.

       Copyright (c) 2004 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.