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 These have  been  superseded  by  the  kbd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.