/dev/biosfont

DESCRIPTION

     The special file /dev/biosfont is an interface to retrieve font bitmaps
     from the BIOS memory.  The fonts represented are the native system fonts.
     The complete ASCII set (256 characters) can be retrieved.

IOCTL INTERFACE

     The characters can be retrieved using the ioctl() call.  The parameters
     are:

     BIOSFONT_ASCII
             The call identifier for to use for biosfont calls.

     &ch     A reference to an instance of t_biosfont which is defined in the
             header file.  t_biosfont has two fields:

             u_char bitmap[8]
                     The output, contains the bitmap scanlines.  The top scan-
                     line is stored in bitmap[0], the bottom scanline is
                     stored in bitmap[7].  The scanlines themselves are stored
                     little endian (MSB first).

             u_char nr
                     ASCII code of character to retrieve, range is bound to 0
                     <= nr <= 255

COMPATIBILITY

     Due to a braindead endianness implementation the driver is only guaran-
     teed to work on i386 architectures.  That is also the only architecture
     known to the author to actually have the bitmap fonts.

FILES

     /usr/local/include/biosfont.h
             The header file to include when accessing the driver.

     /dev/biosfont
             The device node for the driver.

     /boot/modules/biosfont.ko
             The kernel module to load when using the driver.

HISTORY

     The biosfont driver was first written in August 2003, and rewritten in
     April 2006 when the original sources were lost (oops).  It was released
     to the public on May 7, 2006.

     Patches can be send to the author Rene Ladan <r.c.ladan@gmail.com>.

BSD                              May 10, 2006                              BSD