The fonts for X windows are commonly av= ailable in bdf format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyph_Bitmap_Dist= ribution_Format

The bdf font file is a series of consecuti= ve symbol definitions of the form:

STARTCHAR U+004E
ENCODING 78SWIDTH 500 0
DWIDTH 8 0
BBX 8 16 0 -2
BITMAP
00
00
00<= br>00
42
62
62
52
52
4A
4A
46
46
42
00
= 00
ENDCHAR

My utility
1) acquires a valid BDF symbol= definition via stdin

2) extracts the glyph label, glyph height, g= lyph width, display width, and the bitmap nibbles

2.1) optiona= lly exports an xbm bitmap

2.2) optionally exports a "Dot= matrix" PCB symbol rendition of the glyph using SymbolLine strokes to= depict dots

3) stores the nibbles for each line in the glyph= as a single integer

4) creates arrays in which each pixel is= depicted as an integer

5) steps through the single integer r= epresentation of the rows and scores each pixel, putting the score into the= integer per pixel row array

6) exports consecutive rows of p= ixels as a SymbolLine strokes

7) steps through each column of= scored pixels and does further scoring of each pixel, putting the score in= to the integer per pixel column array
8) exports consecutive columns of = pixels as a SymbolLine strokes

8.1) optionally exports a symbol w= ithout diagonal row detection and conversion to strokes

9) cr= eates left and right skewed arrays of the final pixel scores after column a= nd row export

10) steps through the single integer representa= tion of the right skewed array columns and detects diagonals, exports Symbo= lLine strokes
11) steps through the single integer representation of the= left skewed array columns and detects diagonals, exports SymbolLine stroke= s

12) identifies any left over/orphan pixels and exports a Symbol= Line stroke to depict a "dot"

13) exports a complet= e symbol with vertical, horizontal, and diagonal strokes

14) = looks for another BDF symbol via stdin

This produces outp= ut containing a series of geda PCB symbol definitions for each glyph, and i= s what is in the gz file I mentioned.

Until we= have a mechanism for seamlessly adding unicode symbols or rendering ttf fo= nts, users needing glyphs can search the gzipped archive and cut and paste = their needed symbol, and relabel it to assign it to an unused ascii charact= er.

Anything that increases the potential user base by > 1 billion h= as got to be a good thing.

Cheers
Erich.

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 4:21 AM, Stefan Salewski <mail AT ssalewski.= de> wrote:

On Mon, 2014-09-15 at 00:59 +0930, Erich Heinzle wrote:=
> I have batch processed the gnu unifont bdf

Is there a detailed description available about the conversion proce= ss?

I can remember that I was not really happy with PCB's way including
fonts as lines in each pcb file some years ago, so I did some thinking
about how to do on the fly conversion of arbitrary fonts -- inkscape's<= br> ability to convert bitmaps to vector graphics was one possible way that
time, but I have never investigated it. (My general idea was to use
ordinary fonts for screen display, and convert to lines only for gerber
export.)

I have never seen a pcb board with a single Chinese character, and I can not imagine why an Asian person should have the wish to have such glyphs on a pcb board. But the conversion process is interesting of course...