BDFTRUNCATE(1)

📦
version 1.4.2 · 3 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

💅 BDFTRUNCATE(1) — the X Version 11 one, bestie

okay so real talk, this is a page from X Version 11 and it's about a tiny little tool called bdftruncate, and honestly? she's niche but she EATS. let me tell you everything 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

bdftruncate — generate a truncated BDF font from an ISO 10646-1-encoded BDF font 💖

like yes, that's the whole personality. she truncates. she generates. she's an ISO 10646-1-encoded BDF font girlie.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

bdftruncate threshold < source.bdf > destination.bdf

bdftruncate [ --help | --version ]

two whole modes, no cap. either you feed her a threshold and pipe a font in and out, or you just ask her to --help / --version you 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the vibe: bdftruncate lets you generate, from an ISO10646-1 encoded BDF font, other ISO10646-1 BDF fonts where all characters above a threshold code value are stored unencoded. literally the whole point of her existence 🫶

and why would you even want that? because — and this is the iconic part — the Xlib API and the X11 protocol data structures used for representing font metric information are extremely inefficient when they're handling sparsely populated fonts. like, embarrassingly inefficient. 💀 so we trim the excess off the top and everybody breathes easier.

so yeah: threshold go brrr, high codepoints get unencoded, font becomes less of a mess. periodt.

⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

  • --help — prints the usage message and then exits, iconic behavior, love a clean exit 👑
  • --version — prints version information and then exits, also slay ✨

🔥 EXAMPLE 🔥

the command

bdftruncate 0x3200 < 6x13.bdf > 6x13t.bdf

will generate the file 6x13t.bdf in which all glyphs with codes >= 0x3200 will only be stored unencoded — i.e., they're encoded at codepoint -1. 🧚

yes bestie, -1. that's the whole trick. everything at or above the threshold goes unencoded, bye 👋

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

💜 AUTHOR 💜

bdftruncate was written by Markus Kuhn. 💖

Branden Robinson wrote this manual page, originally for the Debian Project. 🫶

and that's the tea ☕ — she's small, she's specific, she fixes your sparsely populated font metrics. iykyk 💅

sign-off time, bestie: this page came to you courtesy of font-util 1.4.2, dated 2025-04-27 — the BDFTRUNCATE(1) of our hearts. now go truncate something, respectfully 🌸✨

📦 where this page comes from