bisqwit / ibmfonts

IBM Fonts in BDF format

IBM fonts

A collection of monospaced, bitmap fonts in BDF format that origin from IBM text mode and system fonts. They include extended latin, greek, cyrillic and hebrew scripts and several extra characters, for a total of 782 glyphs each. The fonts are in BDF 2.1 format and fully compatible with applications that make use of either Xft or XLFD.

Installation

In order to install the fonts with default settings, run (if necessary as root):

$ git clone https://github.com/farsil/ibmfonts.git
$ cd ibmfonts
$ ./configure
# make clean install

The default behaviour of configure is to look for sources in ./bdf, compile fonts in ./pcf, and install the fonts in /usr/local/share/fonts/misc. configure automatically creates objdir if it does not exist.

AUR Package

If you use Arch Linux, there is an AUR package for these fonts named ibm-fonts. You may use your favourite AUR helper or proceed with manual installation as described here.

Configuration script

You can pass several command line arguments to configure:

--prefix=<PATH>         Prefix for destination directories.
--srcdir=<PATH>         Directory for the source font files.
--objdir=<PATH>         Directory for the compiled font files.
--installdir=<PATH>     Directory to install the fonts in.
--bsd-make              Generate a bmake-friendly makefile.

If srcdir is set and is a relative path, its parent directory will be $(prefix)/src. If objdir is set and is a relative path, its parent directory will be $(prefix)/obj. If installdir is set and is a relative path, its parent directory will be $(prefix)/share/fonts. If you don't want this behaviour simply use absolute paths instead of relative ones.

Removal

From the directory you cloned this repository into, run:

# make uninstall

Updating the font cache

After installation or removal, it is important to update the font cache to reflect changes. For applications that use fontconfig, simply run:

# fc-cache

Letting older applications like xfontsel detect the changes is more complicated. First, check that the installation directory (I will assume it's /usr/local/share/fonts/misc for the sake of the example) is in the X font path. You can verify that by running:

$ xset q

If it is not in the font path, you need to instruct X to read your font directory by adding a FontPath entry under the Files section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (if the file does not exists, create it):

Section "Files"
	# There might be other entries in the section
	FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts/misc"
EndSection

After making sure the installation directory is in the font path, run:

# mkfontdir /usr/local/share/fonts/misc
# mkfontscale /usr/local/share/fonts/misc
$ xset fp rehash

You can check whether the font is detected by X by running either xfontsel or xlsfonts.

Font Preview

IBM BIOS 8x8

XLFD name: -ibm-bios-normal-r-normal--8-60-96-96-c-80-iso10646-1
Filename: ib8x8u.bdf

IBM CGA 8x8

XLFD Name: -ibm-cga-normal-r-normal--8-60-96-96-c-80-iso10646-1
Filename: ic8x8u.bdf

IBM CGA Light 8x8

XLFD Name: -ibm-cga-light-r-normal--8-60-96-96-c-80-iso10646-1
Filename: icl8x8u.bdf

---

IBM EGA 8x14

XLFD Name: -ibm-ega-normal-r-normal--14-100-96-96-c-80-iso10646-1
Filename: ie8x14u.bdf

---

IBM BIOS 8x16

XLFD Name: -ibm-bios-normal-r-condensed--16-120-96-96-c-80-iso10646-1
Filename: ib8x16u.bdf

IBM CGA 8x16

XLFD Name: -ibm-cga-normal-r-condensed--16-120-96-96-c-80-iso10646-1
Filename: ic8x16u.bdf

IBM CGA Light 8x16

XLFD Name: -ibm-cga-light-r-condensed--16-120-96-96-c-80-iso10646-1
Filename: icl8x16u.bdf

IBM VGA 8x16

XLFD Name: -ibm-vga-normal-r-normal--16-120-96-96-c-80-iso10646-1
Filename: iv8x16u.bdf

Credits

VileR from The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack for his pixel-perfect reproductions of these old system fonts. I used his PxPlus fonts as a base.