The most significant change in this release is the addition of scripts to convert Unifont's native hexadecimal string format to and from Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files for graphical editing.
2013-12-15: Release 6.3.20131215
This version introduces unihex2png and unipng2hex, two Perl scripts
that Andrew Miller wrote based upon Paul Hardy's unihex2bmp.c and
unibmp2hex.c programs. These new scripts allow conversion between
the Unifont .hex format and Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files
for graphical editing. With this addition, more graphics programs
can be used to edit Unifont glyphs.
unihex2png and unipng2hex also support glyphs that are 24 or 32
pixels tall, in addition to Unifont's default 16 pixels tall.
Roman Czyborra's hexdraw and hex2bdf Perl scripts were modified
to also support glyphs that are 16, 24, or 32 pixels tall. These
changes have not been fully tested, and at this point are considered
experimental.
There are no plans to add this multi-height support to unihex2bmp.c
and unibmp2hex.c.
The package now contains a "doc/" directory, with documentation
in Texinfo format. Files in the "man/" directory were updated
for consistency, especially in noting that all programs are
covered under GPLv2+ now.
In addition to "unifont-*.*" font files, this package now also creates
"unifont_sample-*.*" files. These "Unifont Sample" fonts contain
combining circles, and four-digit hexadecimal glyphs for unassigned
code points and Private Use Area glyphs. Because of the inclusion
of combining cirlces, "Unifont Sample" font versions are only intended
for illustrating individual glyphs, not for general-purpose writing.
The two generated fonts are unifont_sample-*.bdf and unifont_sample-*.ttf.
The TTF file contains SBIT glyphs, not outlined TrueType glyphs like
"unifont-*.ttf".
The font versions (BDF, PCF, and TTF) now contain copyright and
version information. This will help identify outdated versions
of a font in the future. hex2bdf now accepts a version string and
a copyright string as command line arguments.
To simplify this package supporting two versions of Unifont
("Unifont" and "Unifont Sample"), hex2bdf now accepts a font name
as a command line argument. This will streamline adding additional
fonts in the future as part of this same package. Note that the
old XLFD font name "unifont" has now been capitalized to "Unifont".
Many XLFD properties have been added to the BDF version of Unifont
in addition to font version and copyright XLFD properties. At least
some of these are carried over to the PCF version during conversion
with bdftopcf. This has solved an issue with grub-mkfont and FreeType
for converting the PCF font into a GRUB version.
Some glyphs were redrawn: the Capricorn sign, several CJK Radicals
Supplement ideographs, and several Armenian letters. The Armenian
letters were modified with the new unihex2png and unipng2hex programs.
Further details are in the ChangeLog file.