[Bug 282634] vt(4): Spleen font is missing many characters

From: <bugzilla-noreply_at_freebsd.org>
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2024 18:02:13 UTC
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=282634

            Bug ID: 282634
           Summary: vt(4): Spleen font is missing many characters
           Product: Base System
           Version: Unspecified
          Hardware: Any
                OS: Any
            Status: New
          Severity: Affects Only Me
          Priority: ---
         Component: misc
          Assignee: bugs@FreeBSD.org
          Reporter: ziaee@runbox.com

Issue: The Spleen font is missing the em-dash, amongst other characters.

Use vidfont(1) to switch to a font in the spleen family and then use `man
mandoc_char` and scroll down, many characters are missing. The most egregious
one is the em-dash, which man(1) uses to separate the document name and
document description, that is a core critical character used in a core piece of
the BSD UX, and IMHO we cannot continue this way.

This is troublesome because the One True font, Terminus-BSD-Console, was only
designed to go up to 16x32. On a modern retina, 2k, or 4k laptop, this is quite
tiny. The only one we have that is nice a big (standard console style on my
Dell) is spleen 32x64.

Proposition: Courier Prime Code is licensed appropriately and is handsome dress
appropriate for the personality of the BSD console.

I would like to convert Courier Prime Code for this task, but I'm having some
trouble. This is a gorgeous and legible font, and I think it looks very good
and fitting speaking for the personality of BSD console. The Open Font License
reads, to me, like we can definitely bundle it with the system.
$ vtfontcvt -w 32 -h 64 courier-32x64.bdf courier.fnt

Bundling a gorgeous font that works in modern resolutions would be a major step
forward for the promotion of the traditional BSD UX values, which, to me, is
one of the pillars of a successful "Promote FreeBSD on laptops" campaign.
Shameless self-promotion { I have been doing everything I can on the other
fronts for this mission by improving apropos results and manual page linking
(create appreciation for traditional BSD doc UX) and release hardware notes
(show them they can run BSD on their hardware). }

Attempt:

x11-fonts/odf2bdf converts truetype fonts to BDF, the intermediary vtfontcvt(8)
says it needs. Using

$ odf2bdf ~/.fonts/Courier.ttf -c C -v -p 32 -o courier-32x64.bdf

and

$ vtfontcvt -w 32 -h 64 courier-32x64.bdf courier.fnt

Yields "vtfontcvt: bitmap with unsupported DWIDTH 27 0 at line 33" (device
width of a glyph, but I don't understand).

and that's about as far as I've gotten. I've tried playing with all the
numbers, but I'm not understanding. I have a draft manual page including every
error I've gotten, etc, so... if I'm helped I will help others?

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