Provided by: unifont-bin_15.0.01-1_amd64 bug

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 "10FFFF", inclusive.  This corresponds to the Unicode  code  points  U+0000
              through U+10FFFF, 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).  A third
              format of 32 pixels wide (drawn as 31 pixels plus a pixel  on  the  right  that  is
              always  blank)  by 16 pixels tall (quadruple-width) is also available, but only for
              experimental use.

              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 with a single tab character.  The first line of each glyph first shows  the  code
       point  for  the glyph, followed by a colon (':').  The 16 lines that graphically represent
       each glyph are followed by one blank line.  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 doc/unifont.info texinfo file included in the source package 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/plane*/*.hex
                      GNU Unifont font files

       LICENSE        The Unifont license

       README         Instructions on building Unifont

       doc/unifont.info
                      Tutorial in texinfo format on customizing Unifont

SEE ALSO

       bdfimplode(1), hex2bdf(1), hex2otf(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 straightforward 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.

                                           2020 Jul 03                                 UNIFONT(5)