> On Feb 8, 2025, at 4:40 AM, Ladislav Lacina via Freedos-devel
> <freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
> <mailto:freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>> wrote:
>
> Yes, I studied file MKV8FONT.PAS and I think I understood the structure.
Great. I'm glad you used that program to figure it out.
Although it is not a complicated format, that tool is much easier to
understand.
Without code comments, simply looking at VFONT could easily lead to incorrect
assumptions.
>
>> I propose using block type 0x10, 0x20, 0x40 or 0x80 to contain codepage
>> data. I’m not picky on the format of the block. However, if I every get
>> around to writing an actual spec for the format, I would like to include the
>> format/layout information for that block.
>
> OK, lets define this block
> 00h: ID:byte = 10h
> 01h: SIZE:word = theoreticaly various but for now: 5
> 03h: SUBTYPE:byte (0=this definition, <>0 = reserved)
> 04h: CODEPAGE:word
> ---END---
Looks great to me.
> You wrote that V8F format supports more font sizes in one file.
> However I will not support this feature in my programs (at least for now)
> because it would need much more effort in my modular font loader and this
> feature I already support in CPI/CPX files.
No problem there. I’m not really using that feature at present either.
I have two other font file formats that will most likely go away in favor of
this more flexible one. The one used by PGME doesn’t bring much added value
over standard raster bitmap fonts. The one used by my Danger graphics engine is
very similar to this format and supports wider characters (at present, up to
32x32 bits/pixels when edited with IMGEDIT). Those can also be displayed as
variable width by the game engine. But, that one is not as flexible as the V8F
format.
> Laaca
Furthermore, its totally up to you if you want to support the ability to only
define sets of characters or always write a full character set (first 0, count
256). As you probably noticed when looking at the MKV8FONT program, it runs
through the entire set and compares the BIOS to the provided font. If they
don’t match, an option was provided to include or skip that character. That
feature is mostly to knock several Kb off of the space required for the various
language fonts on the FreeDOS install floppy. Would not hurt to support. But,
definitely not a requirement.
:-)
Jerome
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