#xmbdfed — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #xmbdfed, aggregated by home.social.
-
Short report on xmbdfed from my Raspberry Pi 400 this morning. It's basically fine and works more-or-less as described. I produced a BDF font file with it. You will need vi or some other editor to fix bugs in the BDF file. It seems very eager to recalculate the DWIDTH (the advance width). This version is 22 years old and nearly 30 in pedigree, and it feels it. You will need a two button mouse (Button-2 deletes; i couldn't work out how to delete pixels on my Mac). The "save" paradigm feels clunky: Each glyph editor doesn't save until you use the Update menu item. That doesn't update the file, the file isn't saved until you use the Save menu item in the Grid Editor. Cut and paste works, and the flip and rotate buttons are useful.
#XmBDFEd -
Short report on xmbdfed from my Raspberry Pi 400 this morning. It's basically fine and works more-or-less as described. I produced a BDF font file with it. You will need vi or some other editor to fix bugs in the BDF file. It seems very eager to recalculate the DWIDTH (the advance width). This version is 22 years old and nearly 30 in pedigree, and it feels it. You will need a two button mouse (Button-2 deletes; i couldn't work out how to delete pixels on my Mac). The "save" paradigm feels clunky: Each glyph editor doesn't save until you use the Update menu item. That doesn't update the file, the file isn't saved until you use the Save menu item in the Grid Editor. Cut and paste works, and the flip and rotate buttons are useful.
#XmBDFEd -
I have been using xmbdfed (the Motif BDF bitmap font editor) more. And experimentally making an 8x16 font, ultimately for VGA console use. My second bitmap font ever (sort of, depending how you count). Just /a to /z so far.
Part of the weird spacing is because the Hoefler proofing text has capitals and my font doesn't. But it also turns out that xmbdfed decided one day that the /n should have DWIDTH 16 not 8. So far using xmbdfed this is the most annoying quirk: it seems very keen to enforce its own opinion of the DWIDTH; and definitely won't get it right for /space.
Made entirely with xmbdfed on my Raspberry Pi 400, and vim.
-
I have been using xmbdfed (the Motif BDF bitmap font editor) more. And experimentally making an 8x16 font, ultimately for VGA console use. My second bitmap font ever (sort of, depending how you count). Just /a to /z so far.
Part of the weird spacing is because the Hoefler proofing text has capitals and my font doesn't. But it also turns out that xmbdfed decided one day that the /n should have DWIDTH 16 not 8. So far using xmbdfed this is the most annoying quirk: it seems very keen to enforce its own opinion of the DWIDTH; and definitely won't get it right for /space.
Made entirely with xmbdfed on my Raspberry Pi 400, and vim.
-
So if you use homebrew on macOS you should now be able to install the BDF bitmap font editor from my tap, by adding the tap, and then installing from its xmbdfed formula:
brew tap drj/tap https://codeberg.org/drj/homebrew-tap
brew install drj/tap/xmbdfed(you may need to `brew trust --formula drj/tap/xmbdfed`; i didn't, but it's possible that i somehow already trusted it)
It is an X11/Motif program, so you will need XQuartz to run it (or display it on a remote X server).
Please share this good news.
[edit: i would also welcome any and all reports of it working / not-working, since this my first homebrew formula and first time packaging xmbdfed and probably first other things]
-
So if you use homebrew on macOS you should now be able to install the BDF bitmap font editor from my tap, by adding the tap, and then installing from its xmbdfed formula:
brew tap drj/tap https://codeberg.org/drj/homebrew-tap
brew install drj/tap/xmbdfed(you may need to `brew trust --formula drj/tap/xmbdfed`; i didn't, but it's possible that i somehow already trusted it)
It is an X11/Motif program, so you will need XQuartz to run it (or display it on a remote X server).
Please share this good news.
[edit: i would also welcome any and all reports of it working / not-working, since this my first homebrew formula and first time packaging xmbdfed and probably first other things]
-
*Frankenstein voice* "It's alive!".
xmbdfed running on my M4 Mac after compiling. Loads of warnings, but only a couple of errors that needed tweaking away.
xmbdfed is Mark Leisher's XMotif (xm) Bitmap Distribution Format (bdf) Editor (ed). The source code i found on Wayback, because of course the original New Mexico State University server is gone. And i only found the link because of the assiduous recording of Luc Devroye, a name who everyone in the type community probably knows, but sadly his website/archival project will not be being updated. Parts of this project, and the greater enterprise, feel like sand slipping through my hands.
-
*Frankenstein voice* "It's alive!".
xmbdfed running on my M4 Mac after compiling. Loads of warnings, but only a couple of errors that needed tweaking away.
xmbdfed is Mark Leisher's XMotif (xm) Bitmap Distribution Format (bdf) Editor (ed). The source code i found on Wayback, because of course the original New Mexico State University server is gone. And i only found the link because of the assiduous recording of Luc Devroye, a name who everyone in the type community probably knows, but sadly his website/archival project will not be being updated. Parts of this project, and the greater enterprise, feel like sand slipping through my hands.