Re: [MiNT] XaAES multi-language help needed

[Paul Wratt <paul.wratt@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 2:56 AM, Eero Tamminen <oak@helsinkinet.fi> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On sunnuntai 16 tammikuu 2011, Christos Tziotzis wrote:
>>  I haven't found a font editor that would read one type of  bitmap font
>> and convert it to the atari fnt type. Fontkit+ could be used to convert
>> a preexisting atari font (such as the ones I have but use the cp737
>> msdos encoding) if you are willing to spend the quite a few hours
>> required for this and for the 4 font sizes but they are probably
>> copyrighted and thus non distributable through MiNT. What I am looking
>> at is converting some free fonts in bitmap format (bdf, psf, pcf) to the
>> atari fnt one. Unfortunately I am too bad a coder to do this. I don't
>> give up though :).
>
> Here are some sources for converting BDF fonts and other related activities:
> http://packages.debian.org/lenny/fondu
> http://packages.debian.org/lenny/trscripts
> http://packages.debian.org/lenny/pcf2bdf
> http://packages.debian.org/lenny/bdfresize
> http://bdf2c.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=bdf2c/bdf2c;a=blob_plain;f=bdf2c.c;hb=HEAD
> http://packages.debian.org/lenny/recode
>
> Nothing to convert them to Atari format, but reading the non-Atari format
> itself is already half of the work, right? :-)
>
>
> I have also source code based on bdf2c for converting BDF fonts to W window
> system binary bitmap fonts which is featurewise somewhat similar to Atari
> bitmap fonts, but simpler although it supports proportional bitmap fonts.
>
> You might be able to convert it with moderate effort to convert to save
> Atari bitmap font format if nobody has to offer anything better/closer to
> what you need.
>
> It's the fonts/bdf2wfnt.c source file in this package:
>        http://koti.mbnet.fi/tammat/src/wws_1.4.5.tar.gz
>
>
>        - Eero
>
I did some research on this back when Pep started coding Conholio.
What you have outlined is about all I found too, maybe a couple of
others.

The only place I have not searched is the Suzy B CD's (there is
another couple of CD's too), or the PD libraries, which are from a
time when DTP was popular on ST, and so font conversion was something
people where interested in.

>From memory I found info regarding one program (on the net), but I
could never find a download of any sort, just references (dont ask me
what it was)

A source code approach might be the only way.

Paul