This is a very basic repository for my IBM 3161 ASCII terminal font.
This repository contains a bitmap version of the font as well as a (slightly less complete) truetype version created through GNU Unifont's "tracing" program which it uses to create its truetype versions. The truetype covers 0x00 through 0xFF (the basic ASCII set and first 'extended' bank), while I have extended the font to cover through about 0x17F in the bitmap versions. Beyond these thresholds, the font more or less falls back on the glyphs from Unifont, which almost match the IBM font glyphs where applicable. This also means that I can use the font for other languages like Japanese, which is handy in a terminal if you are from an area of the world that does not use the latin alphabet as much or when dealing with files from users of another language in a terminal window.
Creating the truetype to the extent I already have took a lot of effort, due to some flawed decision making early on in the process; while I plan to do better going forward, the fact remains that fixing/translating the bitmap glyphs to truetype is a lot of effort – too much for something I rarely use. All of the essentials are still in the TTF, anyway, and I expect that I may slowly continue to improve the TrueType going forward.
I also have included the Fontforge Spline Font Database (SFD) files, which are uncompressed text (and thus pretty big; sorry). If you just want to use the font, I therefore suggest downloading the zip on the 'releases' page instead of cloning the repo.
I used GNU Unifont as a base because it looks somewhat similar and covers a lot of Unicode above the basic ASCII set my IBM terminal supports. Additionally, its sources contained some useful tools for automatically performing transformations on fonts.
Since I first created this font, I have been finding more and more formats I can convert it to! Whenever I find another format to port to, I do so and then add a commit here. Most recently, an Amiga version (made in Workbench 1.3 on an Amiga 500), as well as Minecraft, Rockbox, and an X11 emacs-specific font (to fix strange rendering issues) have been added.
This font is also available in a Minecraft 1.11-and-up compatible resource pack. With minor tweaking it should also work for earlier and future versions. Conveniently, Minecraft uses GNU Unifont for unicode text, which is also the base for my font - this made it simple to add by modifying some tools included with the Unifont source distribution to export the font.
This depends on your platform, but I will try to lay out what works where. For some exotic formats (e.g. Minecraft, Rockbox) the directions are in the ports' respective subdirectories.
On Unix/Linux and Windows platforms the bitmap versions benefit from not getting any software subpixel rendering attempted on them like the TrueType font does. This is probably true in OS X as well, but I only tested the .dfont version of the font in OS X on account of not actually having regular access to OS X. (the dfont is a bitmap-only font, so it probably won't be subpixel rendered.)
On Windows, you will want the windows bitmap .fon file and/or the TrueType font
(.ttf). They can be copied manually to C:\Windows\Fonts, or installed from
the font previewer.
In (non-OS X/NextSTEP) Unix and Linux distros with X11, you'll want the OpenType bitmap (.otb) and/or the TrueType font (.ttf).
There is also a PCF font (old-school X11 font) that it may be a good
idea to install for programs like xterm and the GUI version of emacs.
Installing all three versions (TTF, OTB, and PCF) lets you use the font with
nearly any program on a Unix system. The TTF and OTB can be selected with most
'font chooser' GUI programs, while the PCF is useful for traditional X11
programs like xterm and is usually set through a text configuration file
like ~/.Xresources or ~/.emacs.
I think this will be the same on the BSD's with X11 as it is for Linux distros, since they share a codebase for their X servers and FreeType.
It definitely is the same in OpenBSD and FreeBSD, where I have tried it personally.
The instructions for installing the X11 PCF font are in the X11/README.md file.
Copy the .ttf file to either a local font path (such as ~/.fonts, or to a
system-wide font path (such as /usr/share/fonts/). These paths are probably
distro and OS dependant.
This only for sure applies to Debian and derivatives. It might be different on
distros that I have not tried, but I bet it works there, too.
Copy linux-console/IBM3161.psf to /usr/share/consolefonts/IBM3161.psf.
Then, edit /etc/default/console-setup, and add/change the FONT= line to
read:
FONT="IBM3161.psf"
You're done. You might have to reboot for it to show everywhere.
The setfont command line program should also be able to apply it on a
specific TTY on a one-off basis.
To-do: write up the FreeBSD console installation. I currently haven't gotten it to change in every terminal, just the primary one that you watch the boot process in. I am hoping I don't have to recompile the kernel to get it everywhere.
I assure you, it does work in FreeBSD, though.
On Apple systems (OS X), you'll want to use the '.dfont' file. If that fails, try the .ttf or the .pt3 (PS type 3). IIRC, the installation process was relatively intuitive.
I don't yet know how it would be installed on "classic" Mac OS. If anyone has a System 7 or lower floppy which I can use to start up my Mac Plus, please let me know about it (Or you could send me a better classic mac!)
Instructions to install the Minecraft version of the font are under the
minecraft/ directory.
Rockbox is an alternative firmware for many mp3 players. It has been tested on
my iPod Classic. Instructions are of course in the rockbox/ directory.
I cannot support this port anymore until I can get a new CompactFlash card, as the one in my iPod just failed and the hard drive failed many years ago. Feel free to shoot me a question, but I might not be able to answer it.
There are two main ways to go about this. The first is to just use the truetype font. If I remember correctly, that spaces out everything correctly.
The regular OTB version gets all characters padded out to 16px, regardless of their actual width. On account of this, it is not recommended.
However, the OTB file 8wide/IBM3161APL.otb should work. This is (if I
remember correctly) named as such because it is derived from the APL variant of
Unifont. I discovered that the APL variant of Unifont does seem to render
correctly in emacs, and so I made a similar variant of it for my own font.
I am not sure if it's actually because it's the APL variant, or because maybe
emacs tries to prioritize pcf style fonts over otb ones. Or maybe something
else FreeType related. But whatever the case may be, if you install
IBM3161APL.otb somewhere (I have it in ~/.fonts/), you should be able to
make it work in GNU emacs with m-x customize, or else manually add it to
custom-set-faces in your emacs initialization file (usually ~/.emacs or
~/.emacs.d/init.el).
An example (from my custom-set-faces elisp) follows.
The most important line to focus on is the one containing the string
IBM3161APL. The rest is just provided for context. There's almost nothing I
dislike as much as insufficient context when looking at code samples,
especially in unfamiliar languages.
(custom-set-faces
;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
'(default ((t (:family "IBM3161APL" :foundry "PfEd" :slant normal :weight normal :height 128 :width normal))))
'(term-color-blue ((t (:background "#2272D9" :foreground "#2272D9"))))
'(term-color-cyan ((t (:background "#06989A" :foreground "#06989A"))))
'(term-color-green ((t (:background "#4E9A06" :foreground "#4E9A06"))))
'(term-color-magenta ((t (:background "#A168AB" :foreground "#A168AB"))))
'(term-color-red ((t (:background "#CC0000" :foreground "#CC0000"))))
'(term-color-white ((t (:background "#D3D7CF" :foreground "#D3D7CF"))))
'(term-color-yellow ((t (:background "#C4A000" :foreground "#C4A000"))))
'(tooltip ((t (:inherit tooltip-ui :background "lightyellow" :foreground "black")))))
If someone knows why this IBM3161APL variant actually works when the regular
OTB doesn't, please tell me about it. I really would like to know!
I screen-scraped the font from my IBM 3161 by hand via its built-in "test" mode, where it prints out its entire ASCII character set on a single screen. As a result, I cannot guarantee it to be 100% accurate in terms of spacing between characters, but I can say that I personally have yet to notice anything wrong with it. I have used it in my terminal emulator exclusively for five months now.
You can find some of the images I used here (though I have others that I did with a different amber CRT; I still need to dig those files up).
As such, I am as confident as one can be when using guesswork and (to an extent) tracing the letters in CAD and transforming my photos of the screen to correct for the CRT's curvature. I am certain that the vertical pixels are accurate, as I can make out individual scans of the electron beam in my photos. I am relatively certain that the horizontal pixels are accurate based on common sense, the fact that most characters would look wildly incorrect if shifted over a pixel, and from some trigonometry I did using the CAD tracings. Character 0x7F is a checkerboard pattern, which made it easy for me to find out what the aspect ratio of each 'pixel' is on the CRT near the center of the display.
If I had a ROM dumper, I could also dump the ROM's within the terminal, as they are all socketed. This may happen in the future, but I have been using this font within my terminal emulators and in other places for the last year and not yet found any problems.
If you want to hack on this yourself, I'd suggest using the .hex file as a jumping-off point if you want to be able to generate truetype versions. Merge it with the hex sources of Unifont.
My font does not currently supply most of the non-ASCII "Extended" characters
that are in the real 3161 (characters above 0x7F). Even those characters that
have unicode equivalents do not have them associated with the same 'numbers'
as they have in the terminal, and I am not clever/talented/obsessive enough to
map those all out since I never use them. Additionally, some characters do not
have a unicode equivalent that I am aware of at all.
I would also like to try to turn the 3161 part of it (not the whole of Unifont) into a proper TTF font, meaning one that doesn't look pixellated but is made using vectors for the various angles in the typeface. If you want an example of somebody who has done this for a similar (but not identical!) font, see rbanffy/3270font.
If anyone wants to add them, I will point you to the photos of the terminal's screen in its 'testing' mode, which contains a full printout of all of the characters the terminal is capable of displaying. Feel free to send me a pull request!
These font files are licensed under the GNU General Public License (where applicable), either version 2 or (at your option) a later version, with the exception that embedding the font in a document does not in itself constitute a violation of the license. The full terms of the license are in GNU Unifont's LICENSE.txt. This license is inherited because I have based my font on GNU Unifont for nearly all non-ASCII characters.
If you wish to use only the glyphs that I created (0x00-0x7F in the truetype, or 0x00-0xFF plus unicode superscript and subscript numerical digits in the bitmap), those glyphs are licensed (at your option) under the GNU GPL version 2 or later (with the aforementioned exception regarding embedding), the SIL Open Font License, version 1.1, or the 3-Clause BSD License, which is reproduced below. Additionally, contact me if you wish to use it in another project or product under incompatible terms and I promise I'll be accommodating/not a jerk about it. It might even be free.
Copyright © 2017-2023 Wyatt Ward
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