The pcfont command modifies the system console font,
allowing new characters to be defined in the font and default characters
to be reordered. This allows code sets other than the default PC437
to be supported.
The pcfont command is normally run only from
loadfont(1M),
which is itself normally run only from an init process.
loadfont provides options for pcfont based on the
current system locale.
The first form of the command selects one of a group of 8-bit code pages.
If no arguments are supplied, all characters are reset
to the default font stored in the graphics card ROM (PC437).
The terminal displays the codeset selected by this form of the command in
text mode.
The config_file argument selects a code set from the
following group of configuration files, which are
supplied with the UnixWare system in the Language Supplement package:
Configuration file
Code set
ISO code set
Language(country)
pc737
PC 737
8859-7
Greek
pc850
PC 850
8859-1
Latin 1 (western Europe and the Americas)
pc852
PC 852
8859-2
Latin 2 (central Europe)
pc857
PC 857
8859-9
Turkish
pc866
PC 866
8859-5
Cyrillic
These code sets are supported in the following sizes: 8x8, 8x14,
8x16 and 9x16.
When a code set is selected using this form of the command,
the current font is indicated by the presence of the file
/etc/.font.fontname.
When this file is not present, the default PC437 font is used.
The second form of the pcfont command downloads the file
bdf_font, which must be in BDF format.
If the -c
option is specified, codesets selected by this form of the command are
displayed in graphics mode. The bounding box
for the font must be either 8x16 or 16x16. Other font widths, for example,
24-bit fonts, are not supported.
The remaining optional options specify the font characteristics.
The options are as follows:
-i
Specifies the input character width in bytes. This must be in the range 1-3.
-c
Specifies the codeset. Only EUC codesets (in the range 0-3) are supported.
-p
Specifies the plane for multi-plane codesets. This must be in the range 0-7.
If not specified, this value defaults to 0.
The third form of the pcfont command is used for Unicode. The following option is used:
-8
Specifies the Unicode font type. You must specify this option in order to tell an application to load a
Unicode font and not an EUC font.
NOTE:
You can download Unicode fonts from the World Wide Web which comply with the
BDF format, however they need to be 8-bit fonts.
If these downloaded fonts have lines that are longer than 80 characters (usually the
description lines), pcfont fails.
Configuration file
Code set
Input width
Type
Language
106464-1.bdf
None specified
None specified
Unicode
All languages
8x16rk.bdf
2
2
EUC
Japanese
jiskan16.bdf
1
1
EUC
Japanese
hanglm16.bdf
1
2
EUC
Korean
gb16.bdf
1
2
EUC
Chinese
The fourth form of the pcfont command unloads the specified codeset.
The display then uses the default codeset.
Files
/etc/fonts
contains configuration files and data files
/etc/.font.fontname
if present, identifies the currently loaded code set.