Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!jim
From: jim@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Jim Fulton)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: bdf font creation information
Message-ID: <8909261727.AA11176@expo.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 89 17:27:50 GMT
References: <38@airgun.wg.waii.com>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: X Consortium, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Lines: 26


    Where can I find information about the bdf font file language and/or
    programs that create these fonts for X?  

A document describing the Bitmap Distribution Format (bdf) can be found 
on the MIT tape (see below) under the directory doc/bdf/.  This is a 
very simple textual description of the properties and glyphs of characters
in a font.  BDF files are usually compiled into a binary format which is
read and used by the server.  The program that does this conversion is 
usually called "bdftosnf" or "fc".


    How does one go about getting the MIT X tape?

You can contact the X Hotline at 617-258-8330 to order a set of 9 track,
1600bpi magtapes in UNIX tar format.  There are various companies that will
sell you copies of the tapes on other media.  You can also ftp or uucp the
distribution from a growing number of machines around the country.  


    I copy of the tape I have seen does not have fonts labeled such as 
    vr-20 and so-forth.

You probably weren't looking in the right place:  all of the ugly, crufty
fonts from R1 and R2 were moved to contrib/fonts/bdf/oldx11/ in R3 (there are
also bdf versions of the X10 fonts contrib/fonts/bdf/oldx10/).