Author: ken
Date: Tue Aug 23 17:19:24 2016
New Revision: 17649
Log:
Add a page about console fonts.
I hope the links to the LFS books work, my local server is organised
differently.
Added:
trunk/BOOK/postlfs/config/console-fonts.xml (contents, props changed)
Modified:
trunk/BOOK/general.ent
trunk/BOOK/introduction/welcome/changelog.xml
trunk/BOOK/postlfs/config/config.xml
Modified: trunk/BOOK/general.ent
==============================================================================
--- trunk/BOOK/general.ent Fri Aug 19 15:56:22 2016 (r17648)
+++ trunk/BOOK/general.ent Tue Aug 23 17:19:24 2016 (r17649)
@@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
<!-- $LastChangedBy$ $Date$ -->
-<!ENTITY day "18"> <!-- Always 2 digits -->
+<!ENTITY day "23"> <!-- Always 2 digits -->
<!ENTITY month "08"> <!-- Always 2 digits -->
<!ENTITY year "2016">
<!ENTITY copyrightdate "2001-&year;">
<!ENTITY copyholder "The BLFS Development Team">
<!ENTITY version "&year;-&month;-&day;">
-<!ENTITY releasedate "August 18th &year;">
+<!ENTITY releasedate "August 23rd &year;">
<!ENTITY pubdate "&year;-&month;-&day;"> <!-- metadata req. by TLDP -->
<!ENTITY blfs-version "svn"> <!-- svn|[release #] -->
<!ENTITY lfs-version "development"> <!-- x.y|development -->
Modified: trunk/BOOK/introduction/welcome/changelog.xml
==============================================================================
--- trunk/BOOK/introduction/welcome/changelog.xml Fri Aug 19 15:56:22
2016 (r17648)
+++ trunk/BOOK/introduction/welcome/changelog.xml Tue Aug 23 17:19:24
2016 (r17649)
@@ -45,6 +45,15 @@
-->
<listitem>
+ <para>August 23rd, 2016</para>
+ <itemizedlist>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>[ken] - Add a page on console fonts.</para>
+ </listitem>
+ </itemizedlist>
+ </listitem>
+
+ <listitem>
<para>August 18th, 2016</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
Modified: trunk/BOOK/postlfs/config/config.xml
==============================================================================
--- trunk/BOOK/postlfs/config/config.xml Fri Aug 19 15:56:22 2016
(r17648)
+++ trunk/BOOK/postlfs/config/config.xml Tue Aug 23 17:19:24 2016
(r17649)
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@
don't have much interaction with the other topics in this chapter.</para>
<xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"; href="bootdisk.xml"/>
+ <xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude";
href="console-fonts.xml"/>
<xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"; href="firmware.xml"/>
<xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"; href="devices.xml"/>
<xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"; href="skel.xml"/>
Added: trunk/BOOK/postlfs/config/console-fonts.xml
==============================================================================
--- /dev/null 00:00:00 1970 (empty, because file is newly added)
+++ trunk/BOOK/postlfs/config/console-fonts.xml Tue Aug 23 17:19:24 2016
(r17649)
@@ -0,0 +1,248 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
+<!DOCTYPE sect1 PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
+ "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd"; [
+ <!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../../general.ent">
+ %general-entities;
+]>
+
+<sect1 id="postlfs-console-fonts" xreflabel="About Console Fonts">
+ <?dbhtml filename="console-fonts.html"?>
+
+ <sect1info>
+ <othername>$LastChangedBy$</othername>
+ <date>$Date$</date>
+ </sect1info>
+
+ <title>About Console Fonts</title>
+
+ <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts">
+ <primary sortas="a-console-fonts">console-fonts</primary>
+ </indexterm>
+
+ <para>
+ An LFS system can be used without a graphical desktop, and unless or until
+ you install <xref linkend="x-window-system"/> you will have to work in the
+ console. Most, if not all, PCs boot with an 8x16 font - whatever the actual
+ screen size. There are a few things you can do to alter the display on the
+ console. Most of them involve changing the font, but the first alters the
+ commandline used by grub.
+ </para>
+
+ <para condition="html" role="usernotes">User Notes:
+ <ulink url="&blfs-wiki;/aboutconsolefonts"/></para>
+
+ <sect2 id="grub-video">
+ <title>Setting a smaller screen size in grub</title>
+
+ <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts grub-video">
+ <primary sortas="e-boot-grub-grub-cfg">/boot/grub/grub.cfg</primary>
+ </indexterm>
+
+ <para>
+ Modern screens often have a lot more pixels then the screens used in the
+ past. If your screen is 1600 pixels wide, an 8x16 font will give you 200
+ columns of text - unless your monitor is enormous, the text will be tiny.
+ One of the ways to work around this is to tell grub to use a smaller
size,
+ such as 1024x768 or 800x600 or even 640x480. Even if your screen does not
+ have a 4:3 aspect ratio, this should work.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ To try this, you can reboot and edit grub's command-line to insert a
+ 'video=' parameter between the 'root=/dev/sdXn' and 'ro', for example
+ <literal>root=/dev/sda2 video=1024x768 ro</literal> based on the
+ example in LFS section 8.4.4 :
+ <phrase revision="sysv">
+ <ulink url="&lfs-root;/chapter08/grub.html"/></phrase>
+ <phrase revision="systemd">
+ <ulink url="&lfs-rootd;/chapter08/grub.html"/></phrase>.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ If you decide that you wish to do this, you can then (as the
+ <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user) edit
+ <filename>/boot/grub/grub.cfg</filename>.
+ </para>
+
+ </sect2>
+
+ <sect2 id="psf-fonts">
+ <title>Using the standard psf fonts</title>
+
+ <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts psf-fonts">
+ <primary
sortas="g-usr-share-consolefonts">/usr/share/consolefonts</primary>
+ </indexterm>
+
+ <para>
+ In LFS the <application>kbd</application> package is used. The fonts it
+ provides are PC Screen Fonts, usually called PSF, and they were installed
+ into <filename class="directory">/usr/share/consolefonts</filename>.
Where
+ these include a unicode mapping table, the file suffix is often changed
to
+ <literal>.psfu</literal> although packages such as
+ <application>terminus-font</application> (see below) do not add the 'u'.
+ These fonts are usually compressed with gzip to save space, but that is
+ not essential.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ The initial PC text screens had 8 colours, or 16 colours if the bright
+ versions of the original 8 colours were used. A PSF font can include up
+ to 256 characters (technically, glyphs) while allowing 16 colours, or up
+ to 512 characters (in which case, the bright colours will not be
+ available). Clearly, these console fonts cannot be used to display CJK
+ text - that would need thousands of available glyphs.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ Some fonts in <application>kbd</application> can cover more than 512
+ codepoints ('characters'), with varying degrees of fidelity: unicode
+ contains several whitespace codepoints which can all be mapped to a
space,
+ varieties of dashes can be mapped to a minus sign, smart quotes can map
to
+ the regular ASCII quotes rather than to whatever is used for "codepoint
+ not present or invalid", and those cyrillic or greek letters which look
+ like latin letters can be mapped onto them, so 'A' can also do duty for
+ cyrillic A and greek Alpha, and 'P' can also do duty for cyrillic ER and
+ greek RHO. Unfortunately, where a font has been created from a BDF file
+ (the method in terminus and debian's <ulink
+
url="https://packages.debian.org/jessie/utils/console-setup";>console-setup
+ </ulink> such mapping of additional codepoints onto an existing glyph is
+ not usually done.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ There are over 120 combinations of font and size in
+ <application>kbd</application>: often a font is provided at several
+ character sizes, and sometimes varieties cover different subsets of
+ unicode. Most are 8 pixels wide, in heights from 8 to 16 pixels, but
there
+ are a few which are 9 pixels wide, some others which are 12x22, and even
+ one (<filename>latarcyrheb-sun32.psfu</filename>) which has been scaled
up
+ to 16x32. Using a bigger font is another way of making text on a large
+ screen easier to read.
+ </para>
+
+ </sect2>
+
+ <sect2 id="testing-fonts">
+ <title>Testing different fonts</title>
+
+ <para>
+ You can test fonts as a normal user. If you have a font which has not
been
+ installed, you can load it with :
+ </para>
+
+<screen><userinput>setfont /path/to/yourfont.ext</userinput></screen>
+
+ <para>
+ For the fonts already installed you only need the name, so using
+ <filename>gr737a-9x16.psfu.gz</filename> as an example:
+ </para>
+
+<screen><userinput>setfont gr737a-9x16</userinput></screen>
+
+ <para>
+ To see the glyphs in the font, use:
+ </para>
+
+<screen><userinput>showconsolefont</userinput></screen>
+
+ <para>
+ If the font looks as if it might be useful, you can then go on to test it
+ more thoroughly.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ When you find a font which to wish to use, as the
+ <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user) edit
+ <phrase revision="sysv">
+ <filename>/etc/sysconfig/console</filename> as described in
+ LFS section 7.6.5
+ <ulink url="&lfs-root;/chapter07/usage.html"/>.</phrase>
+ <phrase revision="systemd">
+ <filename>/etc/vconsole.conf</filename> as described in
+ LFS section 7.6
+ <ulink url="&lfs-rootd;/chapter07/console.html"/>.</phrase>.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ For fonts not supplied with the <application>kbd</application> package
+ you will need to optionally compress it / them with
+ <command>gzip</command> and then install it / them as the
+ <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user.
+ </para>
+
+ </sect2>
+
+<!-- after that, psf-tools -->
+
+ <sect2 id="psf-tools">
+ <title>Editing fonts using psf-tools</title>
+
+ <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts psf-tools">
+ <primary sortas="a-psftools">psftools</primary>
+ </indexterm>
+
+ <para>
+ Although some console fonts are created from BDF files, which is a text
+ format with hex values for the pixels in each row of the character, there
+ are more-modern tools available for editing psf fonts. The
+ <ulink url="http://www.seasip.info/Unix/PSF/";>psftools</ulink> package
+ allows you to dump a font to a text representation with a dash for a
+ pixel which is off (black) and a hash for a pixel which is on (white).
+ You can then edit the text file to add more characters, or reshape them,
+ or map extra codepoints onto them, and then create a new psf font with
+ your changes.
+ </para>
+
+ </sect2>
+
+<!-- finally, link to terminus and link to it from above -->
+ <sect2 id="terminus-font">
+ <title>Using fonts from Terminus-font</title>
+
+ <indexterm zone="postlfs-console-fonts terminus-font">
+ <primary sortas="a-terminus-font">terminus-font</primary>
+ </indexterm>
+
+ <para>
+ The <ulink
+ url="http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/";>Terminus Font</ulink> package
+ provides fixed-width bitmap fonts designed for long (8 hours and more per
+ day) work with computers. Under 'Character variants' on that page is a
+ list of patches (in the <filename class="directory">alt/</filename>
+ directory). If you are using a graphical browser to look at that page,
you
+ can see what the patches do, e.g. 'll2' makes 'l' more visibly different
+ from 'i' and '1'.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ By default <application>terminus-fonts</application> will try to create
+ several types of font, and it will fail if <command>bdftopcf</command>
+ from <xref linkend="xorg7-app"/> has not been installed. The configure
+ script is only really useful if you go on to install
+ <emphasis>all</emphasis> the fonts (console and X11 bitmap) to the
+ correct directories, as in a distro. To build only the PSF fonts and
+ their dependencies, run:
+ </para>
+
+<screen><userinput>make psf</userinput></screen>
+
+ <para>
+ This will create more than 240 ter-*.psf fonts. The 'b' suffix indicates
+ bright, 'n' indicates normal. You can then test them to see if any fit
+ your requirements. Unless you are creating a distro, there seems little
+ point in installing them all.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ As an example, to install the last of these fonts, you can gzip it and
+ then as the
+ <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem> user:
+ </para>
+
+<screen><userinput>install -v -m644 ter-v32n.psf.gz
/usr/share/consolefonts</userinput></screen>
+
+ </sect2>
+
+
+<!-- then svn up, add changelog, do the propsets, create wiki page -->
+</sect1>
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