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122 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
122 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
3270font: A font for the nostalgic
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==================================
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A little bit of history
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-----------------------
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This font is derived from the x3270 font, which, in turn, was
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translated from the one in Georgia Tech's 3270tool, which was itself
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hand-copied from a 3270 series terminal. I built it because I felt
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terminals deserve to be pretty. The .sfd font file contains a x3270
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bitmap font that was used for guidance.
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Getting it
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----------
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If you are running Debian or Ubuntu and you don't want to mess with
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building your font files, you can simply `apt-get install fonts-3270`
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(It's available from the Debian
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(https://packages.debian.org/sid/fonts/fonts-3270) and Ubuntu
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(http://packages.ubuntu.com/zesty/fonts-3270) package repos at
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https://packages.debian.org/sid/fonts/fonts-3270 and
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http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/fonts/fonts-3270, although the
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packaged version may not be the latest version, but it's good enough for
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most purposes. For those who don't have the luxury of a proper
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system-managed package, Adobe Type 1, TTF, OTF and WOFF versions are
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available for download on
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http://s3.amazonaws.com/3270font/3270_fonts_4cfe95c.zip (although this
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URL may not always reflect the latest version).
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The format
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----------
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The "source" file is edited using FontForge. You'll need it if you want
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to generate fonts for your platform. On most civilized operating
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systems, you can simply `apt-get install fontforge`, `yum install
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fontforge` or even `port install fontforge`. On others, you may need to
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grab your copy from http://fontforge.org/. I encourage you to drop by
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and read the tutorials.
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If you are running Windows, you'll probably need something like
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Cygwin, but, in the end, the font works correctly (with some very
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minor hinting issues).
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Generating usable font files
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----------------------------
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The easiest way to generate the font files your computer can use is to
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run `make all` (if you are running Ubuntu or Debian, `make install` will
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install them too). Using `make help` will offer a handy list of options.
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The script `generate_derived.pe` calls FontForge and generates
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PostScript, OTF, TTF and WOFF versions of the base font, as well as a
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slightly more condensed .sfd file with the base font narrowed to 488
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units, with no glyph rescaling (or cropping - we need to fix that) and
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its corresponding PostScript, TTF, OTF and WOFF versions.
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Contributing
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------------
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I fear GitHub's pull-request mechanism may not be very
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FontForge-friendly. If you want to contribute (there are a lot of
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missing glyphs, such as most non-latin alphabets which most likely were
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never built into 3270 terminals), the best workflow would probably be to
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add the encoding slots (if needed), add/make the changes, remove the
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unchanged glyphs and save it as a different file. If, in doubt, get in
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touch and we will figure out how to do it right.
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In order to generate the sample image and the grids for FontForge,
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you'll need a Python 3 environment with PIL or pillow installed. The
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requirements.txt file lists everything you need to do it.
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Known problems
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--------------
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Not all symbols in the 3270 charset have Unicode counterparts. When
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possible, they are duplicated in the Unicode space. The 3270-only
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symbols are at the end of the font, along with some glyphs useful for
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building others.
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Please refer to http://x3270.bgp.nu/Charset.html for a complete map.
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Future improvements
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-------------------
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A grid generator is provided for producing various grid sizes for the
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font. Those grids are not used yet, but they are intended to be used to
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align font features to provide better rendering at common font size
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choices. The captures below exemplify these choices:
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