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) func-
       tions.

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       have been superseded by the kbd package (in the kernel since ages).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), restore-
       textmode(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							    restorefont(1)