1. PSF fonts

PSF fonts come in two types: old (psf1) and new (psf2). A PSF font consists of (1) The header, (2) The font, (3) Unicode information.

1.1 The header

For psf1 this is

#define PSF1_MAGIC0     0x36
#define PSF1_MAGIC1     0x04

#define PSF1_MODE512    0x01
#define PSF1_MODEHASTAB 0x02
#define PSF1_MODEHASSEQ 0x04
#define PSF1_MAXMODE    0x05

#define PSF1_SEPARATOR  0xFFFF
#define PSF1_STARTSEQ   0xFFFE

struct psf1_header {
        unsigned char magic[2];     /* Magic number */
        unsigned char mode;         /* PSF font mode */
        unsigned char charsize;     /* Character size */
};

For psf2 this is

#define PSF2_MAGIC0     0x72
#define PSF2_MAGIC1     0xb5
#define PSF2_MAGIC2     0x4a
#define PSF2_MAGIC3     0x86

/* bits used in flags */
#define PSF2_HAS_UNICODE_TABLE 0x01

/* max version recognized so far */
#define PSF2_MAXVERSION 0

/* UTF8 separators */
#define PSF2_SEPARATOR  0xFF
#define PSF2_STARTSEQ   0xFE

struct psf2_header {
        unsigned char magic[4];
        unsigned int version;
        unsigned int headersize;    /* offset of bitmaps in file */
        unsigned int flags;
        unsigned int length;        /* number of glyphs */
        unsigned int charsize;      /* number of bytes for each character */
        unsigned int height, width; /* max dimensions of glyphs */
        /* charsize = height * ((width + 7) / 8) */
};

The meaning is fairly clear from the field names. The fonts here are bitmap fonts (not, for example, vector fonts), and each glyph has a height and a width. The bitmap for a glyph is stored as height consecutive pixel rows, where each pixel row consists of width bits followed by some filler bits in order to fill an integral number of (8-bit) bytes. Altogether the bitmap of a glyph takes charsize bytes.

For psf1 the width is constant 8, so that the height equals the charsize.

The number of glyphs in the font equals length. For psf1 the length is constant 256, unless the PSF1_MODE512 bit is set in the mode field, in which case it is 512.

The font is followed by a table associating Unicode values with each glyph in case (for psf1) the PSF1_MODEHASTAB bit is set in the mode field, or (for psf2) the PSF2_HAS_UNICODE_TABLE bit is set in the flags field.

The starting offset of the bitmaps in the font file is given by headersize. (This allows the header to grow, probably depending on version, without changes in the code.)

The integers in the psf2 header struct are little endian 4-byte integers.

1.2 The font

The actual bitmaps.

1.3 Unicode information

The bitmaps may be followed by a Unicode description of the glyphs. This Unicode description of a position has grammar

<unicodedescription> := <uc>*<seq>*<term>
<seq> := <ss><uc><uc>*
<ss> := psf1 ? 0xFFFE : 0xFE
<term> := psf1 ? 0xFFFF : 0xFF

The semantics is as follows. The leading <uc>* part gives Unicode symbols that are all represented by this font position. The following sequences are sequences of Unicode symbols - probably a symbol together with combining accents - also represented by this font position.

Example: At the font position for a capital A-ring glyph, we may have (psf1):

     00C5,212B,FFFE,0041,030A,FFFF

1.4 Historical

PSF stands for PC Screen Font. The psf1 format without Unicode map was designed by H. Peter Anvin in 1989 or so for his DOS screen font editor FONTEDIT.EXE. In Oct 1994 he added the Unicode map and the programs psfaddtable, psfgettable, psfstriptable to manipulate it - see kbd-0.90. Andries Brouwer added support for sequences of Unicode values and the psf2 format in Sep 1999 in order to handle Tibetan - see kbd-1.00.