PK2BM(1)

📦 version 2026.0, in alpine 3.24

🎀 PK2BM(1) 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

okay so the whole point of pk2bm is to create a bitmap from a TeX pkfont 🧚 literally that's it, that's the job 💅

💖 SYNOPSIS 💖

pk2bm [-bh] [-Wwidth] [-Hheight] -cchar pkfont

pk2bm [-bh] [-Wwidth] [-Hheight] -ooctchar pkfont

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay bestie, listen 👂 this program makes a bitmap (an ASCII file!) that you can use to build X11 applications ✨ the bitmap file holds every pixel of one specific character, picked either with -c or -o, from the pkfont you give it. the file format is described in bitmap(X11), so go check that if you wanna get nerdy 🤓

quick lore 📜 the pkfont is a packed fontfile that gftopk(TeX) makes from a gffont. and a gffont is the output of METAFONT, which is a program for designing fonts in a device independent way. it's giving font-design pipeline 😭🫶

now the flags, iykyk 🍓

  • -b makes a bitmap where black pixels show up as a * and white ones show up as a . 🖤🤍
  • -h gives you a hexadecimal bitmap dump instead 🔥

and then the size stuff 📐 -W and/or -H let you make a bitmap of a certain width and/or height in pixels 🌸 when you do that, the pk-bitmap gets centered inside those new dimensions. so cute, no cap 🥹

the output goes to the standard output, so you can pipe it wherever your heart desires 💅

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

  • METAFONT, Donald Knuth. the OG 👑
  • The PKtype processor, which belongs to the METAFONTware family 🧚
  • bitmap(X11) 🦋
  • gftopk(TeX) 💜
  • pktype(TeX) ⭐
  • ps2pk(1) 🎀

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Piet Tutelaers is the legend behind this one ✨ it's maintained in TeX Live, so if you find a bug or wanna send any other correspondence, email tex-k@tug.org (https://lists.tug.org/tex-k) 🫶

bestie, that's the whole thing 🌈 PK2BM(1) from the General Commands Manual, dated 30 August 2022, all wrapped up 🎀💖 slay forever 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from