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  exmaple  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),    unicoverage(1),    unidup(1),    unifont-viewer(1),
       unifontchojung(1),  unifontksx(1),  unifontpic(1),   unigencircles(1),   unigenwidth(1),   unihex2bmp(1),
       unihex2png(1), unihexfill(1), unihexgen(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)