HEX2BDF(1)

📦
version 17.0.04 · 3 versions
, in alpine 3.22, alpine 3.23, alpine 3.24, debian trixie, fedora 43, fedora 44, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 HEX2BDF(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the General Commands Manual section, page one, and the star of the show is hex2bdf — she's a little command-line fairy that turns hex into fonts and honestly? iconic behavior. 🧚✨

✨ NAME ✨

hex2bdf — Convert a GNU Unifont .hex file into a BDF font

no cap, that's literally her whole job and she does it flawlessly 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

hex2bdf [options] < input-font.hex > output-font.bdf

see how she eats from STDIN and serves to STDOUT? pipe princess energy fr fr 🎀

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea: hex2bdf reads a sorted GNU Unifont .hex file from STDIN — and when we say sorted, we mean sorted with the Unix sort utility, do not skip that step bestie, she needs it in order 😭 — and then she writes a BDF version of that font straight out to STDOUT. that's it. that's the whole vibe. in goes hex, out comes BDF, slay. ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -f "font-name" — tell her what to name the font. if you ghost this option, she just defaults to the font name "Unifont" because she's loyal like that 🫶
  • -v "font-version" — set the font version. skip it and she'll go with the default version "1.0", classic.
  • -c "font-copyright" — drop in the copyright info for the font. the default here is the null string, so like... nothing. empty. a void. a blankie with no text 🙈
  • -r pixel-rows — how many pixel rows tall is a glyph, bestie? the default is the traditional Unifont 16 rows of pixels. this option is a whole new addition, and it exists to support unihex2png(1) and unipng2hex(1), which let you design glyphs that are 16, 24, or 32 pixel rows tall. glow up for real 🔥

🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

sample usage, here's how she's meant to be run:

hex2bdf -f "Unifont" -c "(C) 2013..." unifont.hex > unifont.bdf

look at that. name set, copyright set, hex in, BDF out. main character command line, periodt 👑

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • *.hex GNU Unifont font files

(the hex girlies. she only speaks hex. iykyk 💜)

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

bdfimplode(1), hex2otf(1), hex2sfd(1), hexbraille(1), hexdraw(1), hexkinya(1), hexmerge(1), johab2syllables(1), johab2ucs2(1), unibdf2hex(1), unibmp2hex(1), unibmpbump(1), unicoverage(1), unidup(1), unifont(5), unifont-johab631(5), unifont-viewer(1), unifont1per(1), unifontchojung(1), unifontksx(1), unifontpic(1), unigen-hangul(1), unigencircles(1), unigenwidth(1), unihex2bmp(1), unihex2png(1), unihexfill(1), unihexgen(1), unihexpose(1), unihexrotate(1), unijohab2html(1), unipagecount(1), unipng2hex(1)

that's the whole friend group, go say hi, they're all part of the Unifont cinematic universe 💖

👑 AUTHOR 👑

hex2bdf was written by Roman Czyborra. legend behavior, we love him for it 🙌

📜 LICENSE 📜

hex2bdf is Copyright © 1998 Roman Czyborra.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

(so basically: free, shareable, remixable, just keep it free and give the credit. the GPL way 💚)

💀 BUGS 💀

No known bugs exist. BUT — and this is the important part — support for glyph heights other than 16 pixels is brand new and has not been extensively tested. so if you're out here running -r with 24 or 32 rows, be a little gentle with her, she's new to this 😭✨

so yeah, that's the page bestie. go forth, pipe some hex, and make fonts. and for the record, this page is from the 2008 Jul 06 era of HEX2BDF(1) — vintage manual, timeless queen 🎀💖🦋

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