NAME

       restorefont - save or restore the SVGA font for textmode.

SYNOPSIS

       restorefont {-r|-w} filename

DESCRIPTION

       The   font  used  by  SVGA  when  in  textmode  is  written  to  or  restored  from  filename  using  the
       vga_gettextfont(3) and vga_puttextfont(3) functions.

FILE FORMAT

       The VGA font file filename has the following format:

              Offset:
                 0 -   31  Character 0
                  ...          ...
              8164 - 8195  Character 255

       Each row of a character bitmap is stored as a byte (8 pixels).  The space that is left from  the  32-byte
       buffer for each character is ignored, e.g. a 16 line font uses only offsets 0 - 15 of each character.

       Linux textmode screen resolutions:

       80x25    16 line font  400 scanlines
       80x28    14 line font  400 scanlines
       80x50     8 line font  400 scanlines

       The font sizes and resolutions of extended textmodes depend on the video card type and BIOS:

       132x25   14 line font  350 scanlines (ugly)
       132x25   16 line font  400 scanlines
       132x43    8 line font  350 scanlines (use fix132x43 to fix/improve)
       132x50    8 line font  400 scanlines

       Using  a  font that has less lines per character than the textmode works, but the characters are smaller.
       Using a font that is bigger than the textmode font results in the bottom part  of  characters  being  cut
       off.

       The  svgalib  distribution  contains  sample  fonts  with  8,  14  and  16  line  characters in the files
       utils/font8, utils/font14, and utils/font16.

       The convfont (1) program can be used to convert fonts straightforwardly stored  character-after-character
       (i.e. each character only uses 8/14/whatever bytes), to the 32-byte per character format that restorefont
       requires.

       The purpose of this program is usually to recover from a crashed console due  to  an  svgalib,  Xfree  or
       other  program bug. First save the state of the SVGA card when on a text console. After the crash restore
       this state. The savetextmode(1) and textmode(1) script makes this procedure very easy.

       The national/fontpak packages, which include kernel patches, allow different textmode fonts to be used in
       different virtual consoles. These have been superseded by the kbd package (in the kernel since ages). See
       the setfont(8) utility of the kbd package as a starting point.

       Recent kernels support up to 2 fonts with 512 chars each. Recent  versions  of  svgalib  take  this  into
       account and extend the size of the datafile accordingly.

OPTIONS

       -w filename
              write the font to the file filename.

       -r filename
              restore the font from the file filename.

SEE ALSO

       svgalib(7),  vgagl(7),  libvga.config(5), setfont(8), vga_gettextfont(3), vga_puttextfont(3), dumpreg(1),
       convfont(1), fix132x43(1), restoretextmode(1), restorepalette(1), runx(1),  savetextmode(1),  setmclk(1),
       textmode(1).

AUTHOR

       This  manual  page  was  edited by Michael Weller <eowmob@exp-math.uni-essen.de>. The exact source of the
       referenced utility as well as of the original documentation is unknown.

       It  is  very  likely  that  both  are  at  least  to   some   extent   are   due   to   Harm   Hanemaayer
       <H.Hanemaayer@inter.nl.net>.

       Occasionally  this  might  be wrong. I hereby asked to be excused by the original author and will happily
       accept any additions or corrections to this first version of the svgalib manual.