jameswitzeman.net/fonts/terminus-font/README

Contents:

1. About.
1.1. Build requitements.
1.2. Quick installation.
1.3. Legend.
1.4. Variants.
1.5. Notes.
1.6. Alternative tools.

2. Linux console.
2.1. Installation.
2.2. Usage.
2.3. Quick reference.
2.4. Legend.
2.5. Notes.

3. X11 Window System.
3.1. Installation.
3.2. Notes.

4. Open Type Bitmap.
4.1. Installation.
4.2. Notes.

5. Microsoft Windows.
5.1. Installation package.
5.2. Font file only.
5.3. Notes.

6. Frequently Asked Questions.

7. Legal information.
7.1. Licenses.
7.2. Copyright.

--

1. About.

This archive contains source code for generating and installing Terminus
Font for Linux console, X11 Window System, Microsoft Windows and Open Type
Bitmap capable systems.

- version	4.49.1
- sizes		6x12, 8x14, 8x16, 10x18, 10x20, 11x22, 12x24, 14x28, 16x32
- weights	normal, bold, CRT VGA bold
- characters	1356
- format	Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF) version 2.1

The character set covers about 120 language sets and supports ISO8859-1/2/5/
7/9/13/15/16, Paratype-PT154/PT254, KOI8-R/U/E/F, Esperanto and many IBM,
Windows and Macintosh code pages, as well as the IBM VGA, vt100 and xterm
pseudographic characters.


1.1. Build requirements.

- GNU make
- Python 3.5.0+ (or node.js 6.9.0+ as alternative)
- for X11 only: bdftopcf
- for Windows only: GCC for Win32/i686
- for the Windows installer only: NSIS and patch(1).


1.2. Quick installation.

The commands:

$ ./configure [--prefix=PREFIX]
$ make -j8
# make install fontdir

compile and install the Linux console and X11 Window System fonts.
The default PREFIX is /usr/local.


1.3. Legend.

The file names are structured as follows:

ter-u<SIZE><STYLE>.bdf

<SIZE> is the font height. <STYLE> is n for normal (all sizes), b for bold
(all sizes except 6x12), and v for CRT VGA bold (8x14 and 8x16 only, uses
the eight character matrix column).


1.4. Variants.

Some characters are implemented in two variants. To use the alternate
variant, execute:

$ patch -p1 -i alt/<NAME>.diff

before making the font. See the font WEB page for examples. If you want to
combine hi2 with dv1 and/or ka2, apply hi2 and then hi2-dv1 and/or hi2-ka2.
The default variant for unicode range 2800-28FF is oriented towards
pseudographics.


1.5. Notes.

The commands marked with $ can be executed by a regular user.
The configure commands are optional.
"make -j8" runs 8 jobs in parallel.

Sizes 6x12, 11x22, 14x28-bold and 16x32-normal are worse than the others.
Avoid them.

210E and 210F are not italic.

226A, 226B and the double struck letters are not very good.

2135 may be wrong.

The hebrew letters and sheqel are uppercase height, which is an attempt to
compensate for the missing width.


1.6. Alternative tools.

If your Python 3 executable is named python instead if python3:

$ ./configure INT=python

To use node.js instead of python:

$ ./configure INT=node EXT=js

--

2. Linux console.

- weights	normal, bold, CRT VGA-bold
- code pages	ISO8859-1/ISO8859-15/Windows-1252, ISO8859-2/Windows-1250,
		Windows-1251/ISO8859-5, ISO8859-9/Windows-1254, ISO8859-16,
		ISO8859-7/Windows-1253, ISO8859-13/Windows-1257, IBM-437,
		Bulgarian-MIK, KOI8-R, KOI8-U, Paratype-PT154, combined
- format	PC Screen Font (PSF) with unicode data


2.1. Installation.

$ ./configure [--prefix=PREFIX | --psfdir=DIRECTORY]
$ make -j8 psf
# make install-psf

The files are compressed with gzip and installed in DIRECTORY. The default
DIRECTORY is PREFIX/share/consolefonts. For kbd, you may need to change it
to PREFIX/lib/kbd/consolefonts or PREFIX/share/kbd/consolefonts, depending
on the kbd version.

The CRT VGA bold weight fonts, suitable for real CRT text modes only, are
not installed by default. To install them, execute:

$ make -j8 psf-vgaw
# make install-psf-vgaw


2.2. Usage.

To load a cont in consoletools:

$ consolechars [-m MAPPING] -f ter-<X><SIZE><STYLE>

To load a font in kbd:

$ setfont [-m MAPPING] ter-<X><SIZE><STYLE>

where <X> is a character identifying the code page as listed in p.2.4.


2.3. Quick reference.

The commands:

$ ./configure [--prefix=PREFIX | --psfdir=DIRECTORY | --psfref=FILENAME]
# make install-psf-ref

install the text from p.2.4 as FILENAME (the default is README.terminus)
in DIRECTORY.


2.4. Legend.

names	mappings		covered codepage(s)

ter-1*	iso01, iso15, cp1252	ISO8859-1, ISO8859-15, Windows-1252
ter-2*	iso02, cp1250		ISO8859-2, Windows-1250
ter-7*	iso07, cp1253		ISO8859-7, Windows-1253
ter-9*	iso09, cp1254		ISO8859-9, Windows-1254
ter-c*	cp1251, iso05		Windows-1251, ISO8859-5
ter-d*	iso13, cp1257		ISO8859-13, Windows-1257
ter-g*	iso16			ISO8859-16
ter-h*	cp1255, iso08		Windows-1258, ISO8859-8
ter-i*	cp437			IBM-437
ter-k*	koi8r			KOI8-R
ter-m*	mik			Bulgarian-MIK
ter-p*	pt154			Paratype-PT154
ter-u*	koi8u			KOI8-U

ter-v*	all mappings / code pages listed above and many others, about 110
	language sets, 8 or 16 foreground colors depending on the kernel and
	console driver versions

names	weight

ter-*n	normal
ter-*b	bold
ter-*v	CRT VGA bold


2.5. Notes.

The combined code page is based on IBM-437 (character 0xFF is ogonek).
The ISO8859-16 font also includes all letters and accents from Windows-1250.

--

3. X11 Window System.

- weights	normal, bold
- code pages	ISO8859-1/Windows-1252, ISO8859-2, ISO8859-5, ISO8859-7,
		ISO8859-9/Windows-1254, ISO8859-13, ISO8859-15, ISO8859-16,
		Windows-1251, IBM-437, KOI8-R, KOI8-U, Paratype-PT154 and
		ISO10646-1 (unicode)
- format	Portable Compiled Font (PCF)


3.1. Installation.

$ ./configure [--prefix=PREFIX | --x11dir=DIRECTORY]
$ make -j8 pcf
# make install-pcf

The files are compressed with gzip and installed in DIRECTORY. The default
DIRECTORY is PREFIX/share/fonts/terminus. Requires bdftopcf.

A copy of the normal 6x12 font is installed as "bold", because some X11
libraries and applications substitute the missing bold fonts by shifting the
normal fonts, and others do not recognize the bold weight at all if the
lowest font size lacks it.

To update the font cache in DIRECTORY after (un)installation, run:

# make fontdir

The configuration file which lists the font directories must contain
DIRECTORY. The X11 server may need to be restarted so the font list can be
updated.

By default, only the unicode (ISO10646-1) font is installed. To install the
other code pages:

$ make -j8 pcf-8bit
# make install-pcf-8bit


3.2. Notes.

The ISO8859-1 and ISO8859-9 fonts contain the Windows Western characters and
can be used as Windows-1252 and Windows-1254 respectively.

--

4. Open Type Bitmap.

- weights	normal, bold
- code pages	ISO10646-1 (unicode)
- format	Linux/UNIX bitmap-only TrueType


4.1. Installation.

$ ./configure [--prefix=PREFIX | --otbdir=DIRECTORY]
$ make otb
# make install-otb

The files are installed in DIRECTORY.
The default DIRECTORY is PREFIX/share/fonts/terminus.


4.2. Notes

An OTB file is generated for each BDF file, instead of combining sizes by
weight, for the following reasons:

- KDE compatibility. With combined files, only the first size is available.

- Correct global font metrics. For example, the base line and character
  width for 8x14 and 8x16 (relative to height) may never be identical.

otb1cli is NOT a full-featured BDF to sfnt convertor. It expands the bitmaps
first, uses the expanded widths, does not support overlapping characters,
and targets Linux/UNIX only.

--

5. Microsoft Windows.

- weights	normal, bold
- code pages	Windows-1252, 1250, 1253, 1254, 1251 and 1257
- format	Font File Format version 2.0, compiled into FON


5.1. Installation package.

Make sure that no variant patches are applied to the font (p.1.4).

> cd win32
> build

Be patient, the process may take several minutes.
After that, open terminus.nsi and compile it.


5.2. Font file only.

> copy *.bdf win32
> cd win32
> make -j8

You can install terminus.fon via the regular means.


5.3. Notes.

The Windows code pages contain a total of 384 characters. All other
characters (math, pseudographics etc.) are not currently available.

--

6. Frequently Asked Questions.

Q. Italic version?

A. No. The quality is significantly lower, and preserving the font width
requires overlapping characters, which are not handled very well by X11/Xft.
You can try mkitalic from FreeBSD or bdfslant from Debian.

Q. Scalable version?

A. Probably not. The font uses a lot of straight horizontal and vertical
lines, which is good for a bitmap, but not so much for a vector font. A
bitmap font packaged as TTF seems possible.

Q. How about some new characters?

A. Contact me and be ready to help.

Q. The bold 6x12 font...

A. ...does not exist, there is no space for a bold font in a 6x12 matrix.
However, the "normal" font is somewhere between.

Q. The font works in X11/Motif, but not in GNOME/KDE/Xfce.

A. Try adding 75-yes-terminus.conf to the Fontconfig configuration files.
For some Fontconfig versions, you may need to replace the text "Terminus"
in 75-yes-terminus.conf with "xos4 Terminus", though that is unlikely.
See also mkfontscale(1), mkfontdir(1), fc-cache(1), xorg.conf(5), xfs(1),
xlsfonts(1), fonts-conf(5) etc.

Q. My terminal emulator does not display cyrillic/pseudographics/...
A. If you have the 8-bit X11 code pages installed, and your emulator uses
"XLFD" font names, make sure that the font name ends with "-10616-1" instead
of "-*-*".

--

7. Legal information.


7.1. Licenses.

Terminus Font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
The license is included as OFL.TXT, and is also available with a FAQ at:
http://scripts.sil.org/OFL

The font includes two variants of unicode range 2800-28FF, but does not
support Braille in any way.

The configure files, python and javascript sources are distributed under
the GNU General Public License version 2.0 or (at your choice) any later
version.


7.2. Copyright.

Terminus Font 4.49.1, Copyright (C) 2020 Dimitar Toshkov Zhekov.
Report bugs to <dimitar.zhekov@gmail.com>

Thanks to Anton Zinoviev, Tim Allen, Kir Koliushkin, Antonios Galanopoulos
and everyone else who helped.