Date: Fri, 22 May 92 16:49:02 CDT
From: csaba AT vuse DOT vanderbilt DOT edu (Csaba A. Biegl)
To: rms AT cs DOT tu-berlin DOT de
Subject: Re:  converting X fonts
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Status: O

Version 1.0 or the grx graphics library contains two utilities for this
purpose:

xwd2fna   and  fontcvt.

Xwd2fna is to be run on a UNIX workstation: it converts the dump of a 
font (produced by the 'xfd' and 'xwd' utilities) to a portable ASCII
format. Fontcvt is to be compiled on the PC, it will convert this
portable ASCII format to the grx font format.

The xwd2fna program in 1.0 is a quick 'throwaway' utility with the
following restrictions:

1)  it will work only with 8-plane (1 byte/per pixel) X window dumps.
2)  the window has to be dumped without frame (use xwd -nobdrs)
3)  you cannot pipe the output of xwd to xwd2fna, it has to go to 
	a file first. (xwd2fna does an fseek from the end of file.)
4)  it will work well only for fixed fonts (proportionals will be converted
    to fixed width the grid size used by 'xfd')
5)  it understands the 'xfd' output only if it does not contain any extra
    info, but only the grid containing the characters.

I plan to release "cbgrx101.zip" very soon after I work out the
remaining few bugs. It will contain the full complement of X11R4 fonts
converted to GRX format. If you can wait a few more days then I suggest
that you get it instead of trying to convert fonts using the old tools
from 1.00.

Csaba Biegl
csaba AT vuse DOT vanderbilt DOT edu