WSFONTLOAD(8) System Manager's Manual WSFONTLOAD(8)

wsfontload — load a font bitmap into the wsfont pool or a wscons display device

wsfontload [-Bbv] [-e encoding] [-f wsdev] [-h height] [-N name] [-w width] [fontfile]

wsfontload -l

The wsfontload utility loads a font bitmap into the wsfont font pool (or a wscons device if the device driver supports this). The font gets assigned a name in this process which it can be referred to by later for use on a display screen. The font is loaded from the specified fontfile, or from standard input if fontfile is not provided.

The options are:

Specifies that the font data is ordered right-to-left byte wise. The default is left-to-right.
Specifies that the font data is ordered right-to-left bit wise. The default is left-to-right.
encoding
Sets the encoding of the font. This can be either a symbolic name or a numeric value. Currently recognized names are:
‘iso’
ISO-8859-1 encoding
‘ibm’
IBM CP437 encoding
‘pcvt’
the custom encoding of the supplemental fonts which came with the BSD “pcvt” console driver
‘iso2’
ISO-8859-2 (Eastern European) encoding
‘iso7’
ISO-8859-7 (Greek) encoding
‘koi8r’
KOI8-R (Russian) encoding

Per default, ‘iso’ is assumed.

wsdev
Specify the device to operate on. Default is /dev/wsfont.
height
Sets the height of a font character in pixels. Default is 16.
Print a list of fonts that have been loaded or are built-in to the kernel.
name
Specifies a name which can be used later to refer to the font. If none is given, the fontfile name is used to create one.
Prints the font's properties before loading it.
width
Sets the width of a font character in pixels. Default is 8.

wsfontload supports ‘.wsf’ file format that contains the necessary information about the font in the font file itself. Such files can be loaded without specifying any arguments, though -N can be used to override the font name.

Typically, the wsfontload utility will be executed during system startup by the rc(8) script. See wscons.conf(5).

Load ISO-encoded 20-pixel high Terminus font and use it on the current console

# wsfontload /usr/share/wscons/fonts/ter-120n.wsf
# wsfontload -l | grep Terminus
Terminus20-ISO8859-1 10x20
# wsconsctl -f `tty` -dw font=Terminus20-ISO8859-1

Load the ISO-encoded 16×32 Spleen font and switch the first console screen to use it:

# wsfontload -w 16 -h 32 -e iso -N spleen32 \
	/usr/share/wscons/fonts/spleen-16x32.fnt
# wsconsctl -dw font=spleen32

Load the IBM-encoded 8×8-font from the wscons(4) distribution:

# wsfontload -N myname -h 8 -e ibm \
    /usr/share/wscons/fonts/vt220l.808

This or another 8×8-font is necessary to use the 50-line screen type on vga(4) displays.

wscons(4), wsfont(4), wscons.conf(5), wsconsctl(8)

Support for ‘.wsf’ font files appeared in NetBSD 10.0.

Many features are missing.

The ‘.wsf’ file format is undocumented.

There is no way to remove a loaded font.

June 9, 2022 NetBSD 11.0