restorefont(1)         Svgalib User Manual         restorefont(1)

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 pix-
       els).   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 proce-
       dure very easy.

       The  national/fontpak  packages,  which   include   kernel
       patches, allow different textmode fonts to be used in dif-
       ferent 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(5),    setfont(8),
       vga_gettextfont(3),  vga_puttextfont(3), dumpreg(1), conv-
       font(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.

Svgalib (>= 1.2.11)         2 Aug 1997                          1