[gentoo-user] Bespoke terminal font

[Peter Humphrey]

Hello list,

I'm still trying to find a terminal font (not an X font) to suit my
deteriorating sight. Every terminal font I've found includes either a dot in
the centre of the /zero/ character or a diagonal bar across it. Either of
these makes a zero resemble an eight: 0, 8. I often need a magnifying glass to
see which it is. I suppose it's meant to distinguish a zero from a capital o:
0, O, but this can be handled better in moderate to large font sizes such as I
use, by sloping the shoulders of the zero to resemble those used in the
publishing trade.

I use DejaVu mono in KDE Plasma, which does not do this and is much easier to
Read with the plain 0. I'd like to find a terminal font like it. Or is there a
tool I can use to adjust the Terminus Font I use in my VTs? All the font
editors I've seen are for GUI use.

There was a half-suitable utility years ago, whose name I've forgotten, which
might well be suitable if it could handle two-byte characters.

Is there either a console font like what I've described, or a font editor that
would allow me to make my own?

[Mark Knecht]

Post by Peter Humphrey
Hello list,
I'm still trying to find a terminal font (not an X font) to suit my
deteriorating sight. Every terminal font I've found includes either a dot in
the centre of the /zero/ character or a diagonal bar across it. Either of
these makes a zero resemble an eight: 0, 8. I often need a magnifying glass to
0, O, but this can be handled better in moderate to large font sizes such as I
use, by sloping the shoulders of the zero to resemble those used in the
publishing trade.
I use DejaVu mono in KDE Plasma, which does not do this and is much easier to
Read with the plain 0. I'd like to find a terminal font like it. Or is there a
tool I can use to adjust the Terminus Font I use in my VTs? All the font
editors I've seen are for GUI use.
There was a half-suitable utility years ago, whose name I've forgotten, which
might well be suitable if it could handle two-byte characters.
Is there either a console font like what I've described, or a font editor that
would allow me to make my own?
--
Regards,
Peter.

There's a terminal font called 'hack' that doesn't have anything inside the
zero.

No idea whether it addresses any other issues.

Sorry about the eyesight issues. I'm starting to deal with a bit of that
myself.

Good luck,
Mark

[Matt Connell]

Post by Mark Knecht
There's a terminal font called 'hack' that doesn't have anything
inside the zero.

Is this the right one?

https://github.com/source-foundry/Hack

[Mark Knecht]

Post by Matt Connell

Post by Mark Knecht
There's a terminal font called 'hack' that doesn't have anything
inside the zero.

Is this the right one?
https://github.com/source-foundry/Hack

Bummer. Looks like he might have changed it.
I'm starting to have old-person type eye problems and
https://itsfoss.com/fonts-linux-terminal/
which from the example has nothing inside the zero,
but the picture on the github page looks like it does.
Mark

As for other fonts to explore AI suggests:

Droid Sans Mono
Inconsolata
Liberation Mono

I see some example pages that look ok but
I don't have time to explore and test.

HTH,
Mark
Source Code Pro

[Mitch D.]

I use either Droid Sans Mono or Inconsolata (one is a fallback for
unsupported glyphs in the other, but I forget which one's which), and I
have nothing inside my zeros. Zero is distinguished by having flattened /
vertical sides, while the capital letter 'O' is rounded.

Post by Mark Knecht

Post by Matt Connell

Post by Mark Knecht
There's a terminal font called 'hack' that doesn't have anything
inside the zero.

Is this the right one?
https://github.com/source-foundry/Hack

Bummer. Looks like he might have changed it.
I'm starting to have old-person type eye problems and
https://itsfoss.com/fonts-linux-terminal/
which from the example has nothing inside the zero,
but the picture on the github page looks like it does.
Mark

Droid Sans Mono
Inconsolata
Liberation Mono
I see some example pages that look ok but
I don't have time to explore and test.
HTH,
Mark
Source Code Pro

[Peter Humphrey]

Post by Mark Knecht
Droid Sans Mono
Inconsolata
Liberation Mono

Those first two have the problem I find troublesome. See my other post for the
third.

Thanks anyway.

[Mark Knecht]

Post by Matt Connell

Post by Mark Knecht
There's a terminal font called 'hack' that doesn't have anything
inside the zero.

Is this the right one?
https://github.com/source-foundry/Hack

Bummer. Looks like he might have changed it.

I'm starting to have old-person type eye problems and
found this article:

https://itsfoss.com/fonts-linux-terminal/

which from the example has nothing inside the zero,
but the picture on the github page looks like it does.

Mark

[Matt Connell]

Bummer. Looks like he might have changed it.

Unfortunately I'm no further help in that case. Visually I live and
die by the slashed zero, using Terminus, which itself is a replacement
for the very old-fashioned ProFont.

[Grant Edwards]

Post by Peter Humphrey
I use DejaVu mono in KDE Plasma, which does not do this and is much
easier to Read with the plain 0. I'd like to find a terminal font
like it.

This package claims to be able to generate console fonts (.psfu) from
TrueType fonts (.ttf) such as DejaVu mono:

https://slackware.uk/~urchlay/repos/ttf-console-fonts/about/

[Peter Humphrey]

Post by Grant Edwards

Post by Peter Humphrey
I use DejaVu mono in KDE Plasma, which does not do this and is much
easier to Read with the plain 0. I'd like to find a terminal font
like it.

This package claims to be able to generate console fonts (.psfu) from
https://slackware.uk/~urchlay/repos/ttf-console-fonts/about/

Thanks Grant; that looks interesting. I'll have a look at it in the morning.

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Grant,

Post by Grant Edwards
...
This package claims to be able to generate console fonts (.psfu) from
https://slackware.uk/~urchlay/repos/ttf-console-fonts/about/

This URL mentions three requirements:

- bdf2psf
- otf2bdf
- psftools

from which only the first (app-text/bdf2psf) seems to be available in
the Gentoo mirror :-(

Sincerely,
Rainer

[Matt Connell]

  - bdf2psf
  - otf2bdf
  - psftools
from which only the first  (app-text/bdf2psf)  seems to be  available in
the Gentoo mirror :-(

dev-util/otf2bdf is available in the 4nykey repository.

media-gfx/psftools is in the gentoo repository as far as I can see.

[Dr Rainer Woitok]

Matt,

Post by Matt Connell
...
dev-util/otf2bdf is available in the 4nykey repository.

Thanks for the pointer. And also thanks to Grant for providing another
pointer.

Post by Matt Connell
media-gfx/psftools is in the gentoo repository as far as I can see.

You are perfectly right -- I just managed to mistype "psftools" in my
query :-/

Sincerely,
Rainer

[Grant Edwards]

Post by Dr Rainer Woitok

Post by Grant Edwards
...
This package claims to be able to generate console fonts (.psfu) from
https://slackware.uk/~urchlay/repos/ttf-console-fonts/about/

- bdf2psf
- otf2bdf
- psftools
from which only the first (app-text/bdf2psf) seems to be available in
the Gentoo mirror :-(

https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/media-gfx/psftools

https://gpo.zugaina.org/dev-util/otf2bdf

[Peter Humphrey]

Post by Grant Edwards

Post by Peter Humphrey
I use DejaVu mono in KDE Plasma, which does not do this and is much
easier to Read with the plain 0. I'd like to find a terminal font
like it.

This package claims to be able to generate console fonts (.psfu) from
https://slackware.uk/~urchlay/repos/ttf-console-fonts/about/

That's exactly what I needed - thank you Grant. At least, I think it is.

Now, having created a deja.psf.gz from DejaVuSansMono, and put it in /usr/
local/share, I've set the font to /usr/local/share/deja and restarted
consolefont. I get an error: "setfont.c:58 do_loadfont: Bad character height
37".

Changing the point size specified to otf2bdf (and rerunning bdf2psf) makes no
difference.

Next, I tried doing the same thing to Liberation.Mono-Regular, but bdf2psf
complained "the width is not integer number." I had taken care to copy the
previous bdf2psf command, which appeared to have succeeded, simply
substituting the font name.

Has anyone another clue for me? I'm a bit stuck at the moment.

[David Rosenbaum]

Thank u

Dave

Post by Peter Humphrey
Hello list,
I'm still trying to find a terminal font (not an X font) to suit my
deteriorating sight. Every terminal font I've found includes either a dot in
the centre of the /zero/ character or a diagonal bar across it. Either of
these makes a zero resemble an eight: 0, 8. I often need a magnifying glass to
0, O, but this can be handled better in moderate to large font sizes such as I
use, by sloping the shoulders of the zero to resemble those used in the
publishing trade.
I use DejaVu mono in KDE Plasma, which does not do this and is much easier to
Read with the plain 0. I'd like to find a terminal font like it. Or is there a
tool I can use to adjust the Terminus Font I use in my VTs? All the font
editors I've seen are for GUI use.
There was a half-suitable utility years ago, whose name I've forgotten, which
might well be suitable if it could handle two-byte characters.
Is there either a console font like what I've described, or a font editor that
would allow me to make my own?
--
Regards,
Peter.

[Walter Dnes]

Post by Peter Humphrey
Hello list,
I'm still trying to find a terminal font (not an X font) to suit my
deteriorating sight. Every terminal font I've found includes either
a dot in the centre of the /zero/ character or a diagonal bar across
it. Either of these makes a zero resemble an eight: 0, 8. I often
need a magnifying glass to see which it is. I suppose it's meant to
distinguish a zero from a capital o: 0, O, but this can be handled
better in moderate to large font sizes such as I use, by sloping the
shoulders of the zero to resemble those used in the publishing trade.

Set...

consolefont="solar24x32"

...in /etc/conf.d/consolefont

It is Y-U-U-U-G-E, coming in at 80 columns by 33 rows on my 1920x1080
text console. And no dot in the centre. But you may have problems
distinguishing zero from O and o. <G>

[Peter Humphrey]

Post by Walter Dnes
Set...
consolefont="solar24x32"
...in /etc/conf.d/consolefont
It is Y-U-U-U-G-E, coming in at 80 columns by 33 rows on my 1920x1080
text console. And no dot in the centre. But you may have problems
distinguishing zero from O and o. <G>

:) That's a bit too big even for me!

That pointed me to media-fonts/solarize-0_pre20140818. See that date! I
thought I'd give it a go though.