an attempt to create an outline font of the Heathkit H19 terminal font, after crt monitor - ZenithZ89 System Font - Retrocomputing Stack Exchange
From the ROM file 2716_444-29_h19font.bin extracted from h19.zip at MAME Heathkit H89 Emulator it is fairly clear that 128 characters are encoded as blocks of 10 bytes out of every 16:
00000000: 1818 1818 1818 1818 1818 0000 0000 0000 ................ # char 0x00
00000010: 0000 0000 ffff 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ # char 0x01
00000020: 1818 1818 ffff 1818 1818 0000 0000 0000 ................ # char 0x02
...
00000200: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ # char 0x20, SPACE
00000210: 0008 0808 0808 0008 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................ # char 0x21, EXCLAMATION MARK
...
000007f0: 0000 1c3e 3e3e 1c00 0000 0000 0000 0000 ...>>>.......... # char 0x7f
The first 32 characters are graphic characters, and don't correspond to any currently used encoding.
The character data can be extracted and joined as contiguous data using:
for i in {0..127}
do
dd if=2716_444-29_h19font.bin bs=1 skip="$((i * 16))" count=10 of="$(printf 'h19-%02x.bin' ${i})" status=none
done
cat h19-*.bin > raw-h19.binJohn Elliott's PSF Tools can be used to convert this raw binary file into slightly more useful standard bitmap font files:
raw2psf --height=10 --width=8 --first=0 --last=127 raw-h19.bin h19.psf
psf2bdf --first=0 --last=127 --fontname=HeathkitH19 --descent=2 --defchar=9 h19.psf HeathkitH19.bdfNote that the Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF) file created is effectively un-encoded. It does, however, contain all of the bitmap characters.
bdf2sfd did the heavy lifting of converting from a bitmap to an initial traced outline:
bdf2sfd -f 'Heathkit-H19 Regular' HeathkitH19.bdf > Heathkit-H19-Regular.sfdThe non-ASCII characters were re-encoded using FontForge like so:
U+00B1 ± PLUS-MINUS SIGN
U+00B6 ¶ PILCROW SIGN
U+00F7 ÷ DIVISION SIGN
U+2022 • BULLET
U+2192 → RIGHTWARDS ARROW
U+2193 ↓ DOWNWARDS ARROW
U+2501 ━ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY HORIZONTAL
U+2503 ┃ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY VERTICAL
U+250F ┏ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY DOWN AND RIGHT
U+2513 ┓ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY DOWN AND LEFT
U+2517 ┗ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY UP AND RIGHT
U+251B ┛ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY UP AND LEFT
U+2523 ┣ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY VERTICAL AND RIGHT
U+252B ┫ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY VERTICAL AND LEFT
U+2533 ┳ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY DOWN AND HORIZONTAL
U+253B ┻ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY UP AND HORIZONTAL
U+254B ╋ BOX DRAWINGS HEAVY VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL
U+2571 ╱ BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DIAGONAL UPPER RIGHT TO LOWER LEFT
U+2572 ╲ BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DIAGONAL UPPER LEFT TO LOWER RIGHT
U+2573 ╳ BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DIAGONAL CROSS
U+2580 ▀ UPPER HALF BLOCK
U+2582 ▂ LOWER ONE QUARTER BLOCK
U+258E ▎ LEFT ONE QUARTER BLOCK
U+2590 ▐ RIGHT HALF BLOCK
U+2592 ▒ MEDIUM SHADE
U+2596 ▖ QUADRANT LOWER LEFT
U+2597 ▗ QUADRANT LOWER RIGHT
U+2598 ▘ QUADRANT UPPER LEFT
U+259D ▝ QUADRANT UPPER RIGHT
U+25E4 ◤ BLACK UPPER LEFT TRIANGLE
U+25E5 ◥ BLACK UPPER RIGHT TRIANGLE
U+1FB82 🮂 UPPER ONE QUARTER BLOCK
U+1FB87 🮇 RIGHT ONE QUARTER BLOCK
Note that the upper and lower quarter block mapping is not quite 100% accurate. The H19 font is 10 px high, but there is no ONE FIFTH BLOCK in Unicode (yet).
- clean up the inevitable mess this process made.
Heathkit H19 Terminal Font by Stewart Russell is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
