fonts.md

Beepy Font Hacks

Switching from Kernel fbcon Fonts to User-space Fonts on Beepy

1. User-space vs. Kernel Fonts:

• Kernel Fonts: Specified with the fbcon=font:<name> boot parameter and loaded at boot time.

• User-space Fonts: Can be loaded and switched dynamically after the Raspberry Pi has booted. There's a lot more fonts available. These are used primary in Linux EGA/VGA console. As it is required for the font to contain exactly 256 or 512 characters and Terminus already used all of them this font files have some glyphs substituted

2. Installing User-space Fonts on Beepy:

For Debian-based systems like the Raspberry Pi OS:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install console-setup kbd

After installation, the fonts will be available in /usr/share/consolefonts/.

3. Cloning and Using the Powerline Terminus Fonts:

To use the Powerline-enhanced Terminus fonts, follow these steps:

1. Create a directory for your repositories (if you haven't already):

mkdir -p ~/repos
cd ~/repos

2. Clone the required font:

git clone https://github.com/powerline/fonts.git

3. Copy the Terminus fonts to the consolefonts directory:

sudo cp fonts/Terminus/PSF/*.gz /usr/share/consolefonts/

4. Apply one of the Powerline Terminus fonts using setfont. For example:

sudo setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/ter-powerline-v12n.psf.gz

Normal fonts:

Filename	Rows x Colums
ter-powerline-v12n.psf.gz	66x20
ter-powerline-v14n.psf.gz	50x17
ter-powerline-v16n.psf.gz	50x15
ter-powerline-v18n.psf.gz	40x13
ter-powerline-v20n.psf.gz	40x12
ter-powerline-v22n.psf.gz	36x10
ter-powerline-v24n.psf.gz	33x10
ter-powerline-v28n.psf.gz	28x8
ter-powerline-v32n.psf.gz	25x7

Bold fonts:

Filename	Rows x Colums
ter-powerline-v14b.psf.gz	50x17
ter-powerline-v16b.psf.gz	50x15
ter-powerline-v18b.psf.gz	40x13
ter-powerline-v20b.psf.gz	40x12
ter-powerline-v22b.psf.gz	36x10
ter-powerline-v24b.psf.gz	33x10
ter-powerline-v28b.psf.gz	28x8
ter-powerline-v32b.psf.gz	25x7

I used this script to cycle fonts and measure size:

for font in ter-powerline-v*n*; do sudo setfont $font; sleep 3; echo "| $font | `tput cols`x`tput lines` |"; sleep 1; done

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Persist the font

To persist a font set by setfont across reboots, you'll typically need to configure it at the system level. How you do this depends on the init system and related tools used by your distribution. Since Raspberry Pi often runs distributions based on Debian with the systemd init system, I'll explain the method for that:

1. Persisting the font:

   • Debian/Ubuntu (and Raspbian):

     Modify /etc/default/console-setup. Look for the line starting with FONT and change it to:

     FONT=your-font-name.psf.gz
     

     After making this change, you'll need to update your initramfs:

     sudo update-initramfs -u

2. Reboot:

   Finally, to fully test that the change persists across reboots, reboot your Raspberry Pi:

   sudo reboot

After rebooting, the console should use the font you've specified.

font previews:

ls /usr/share/consolefonts/*.* | sudo fzf --preview="setfont {}; echo the slow box jumped over the electric blue dog" --preview-window=up --keep-right

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Terminus Font Screenshots

Size 8x16

Size 10x20

Size 12x24