
OpenBSD: New console font Spleen made default - kryptiskt
https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20190110064857
======
pavlov
The text sample on the author's site[1] is from Baudelaire's _Le Spleen de
Paris_ , so we can deduce the font's name also refers not to the organ but the
other meaning of the word "spleen":

"Melancholy with no apparent cause, characterised by a disgust with
everything."

[1] [https://www.cambus.net/spleen-monospaced-bitmap-
fonts/](https://www.cambus.net/spleen-monospaced-bitmap-fonts/)

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dijit
I'm sad that nobody added a picture of how it actually looks.

I believe this is the relevant font: [https://www.cambus.net/spleen-
monospaced-bitmap-fonts/](https://www.cambus.net/spleen-monospaced-bitmap-
fonts/)

edit: I'm very stupid and apparently missed the link to this same blog post in
TFA. Leaving this here in case someone else makes the same mistake.

~~~
sgt
I am not sure if this looks terrible or brilliant.

~~~
throwaway2048
well it certainly looks better than the old one

[https://i.imgur.com/VqBzIWn.png](https://i.imgur.com/VqBzIWn.png)

It is the old Sun console font taken originally from OpenFirmware.

~~~
aasasd
Is that... a serif font? How in the heck? Why?

Though I gotta say, the variable stroke width might be less monotone and
taxing on the eyes.

~~~
pdw
The Go Mono font is a modern iteration of that concept. I love it.
[https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts](https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts)

~~~
aasasd
Those are vector fonts. We're discussing bitmap fonts instead.

Nothing surprising about vector serif monospace fonts, since Courier and
variations―which likely constitute way over 50% of all use of monospaced
fonts―are slab-serif fonts.

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aargh_aargh
Am I the only one who finds fonts with thin lines unreadable for longer
periods of time?

My eyesight is perfect, yet every time I run across one of these I switch
fonts or at least zoom in until the line width seemingly doubles.

~~~
ainar-g
This is an unpopular choice, but I have recently switched all my terminals to
the Go Fonts[1], and I couldn't be happier. Those who say that only sans-serif
fonts belong in a terminal have been lying to me this whole time.

[1] [https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts](https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts)

~~~
1_player
Hey, I'm another fan of serifs in monospaced fonts! Go Fonts reminds me of the
Luxi Mono font I've used for years on RedHat/Fedora machines.

Nowadays I love and only use Iosevka Slab:
[https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka](https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka)
(3rd and 4th panel in the topmost screenshot)

------
warpech
Font source with screenshots:
[https://github.com/fcambus/spleen](https://github.com/fcambus/spleen)

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koehr
If somebody struggles with porting those fonts to their Linux, I just got it
running and wrote about it here: [https://koehr.tech/use-openbsds-spleen-
bitmap-font-in-linux](https://koehr.tech/use-openbsds-spleen-bitmap-font-in-
linux)

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heywire
Nice, this might give me the push I need to try BSD on my Dell Latitude 7370
(the XPS 13's cousin). The 3200x1800 display can be a bit hard to read with a
default console font. Not that I spend a whole lot of time in the console
outside of a terminal emulator, but it is still fun :)

~~~
devereaux
Way faster is to use a proper font on Linux:

setfont ter-132n

You can then set it as the default font for all your terminals if you like it.

If terminus is not provided by your distribution, get it from
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/terminus-
font/files/terminus...](http://sourceforge.net/projects/terminus-
font/files/terminus-font-4.46/terminus-font-4.46.tar.gz/download) then
./configure etc. as usual. In the end, you just need to keep the matching psf
file that you can then move along your other console fonts.

~~~
heywire
I feel like I tried this on Arch but it was still too small. I ended up using
either the sun font or one of the cyr ones, can't remember. I've since moved
back to KDE Neon on that machine, so I can't say for sure. I might pop in a
USB stick and give it another go...

------
ah-
I'm slightly disappointed they didn't pick Comic Sans.

~~~
protomyth
Sadly, no one has done a properly licensed, bitmap clone just for OpenBSD
console use. It would really make a nice addition to any OpenBSD presentation.

~~~
mark-r
With Microsoft recently doing so much with open source lately, you might even
get them to donate it.

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zapzupnz
It's partly my bad eyesight, but the thin lines make the [ brackets ] look as
though one's base isn't aligned properly with the other.

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Torgo
How do you make these work in Ubuntu? Tried copying them to
/usr/local/share/fonts and running "fc-cache -f -v" it seems to detect them
but lxterminal, fontviewer were still unable to find and use them...

~~~
BackwardSpy
Ubuntu has bitmap fonts disabled by default.

You can enable them as follows:

    
    
      cd /etc/fonts/conf.d/
      sudo rm -rf 70-no-bitmaps.conf && sudo ln -s ../conf.avail/70-yes-bitmaps.conf .
      sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig
    

The Ubuntu wiki[1] has information about how you can be more specific and only
enable a selection of fonts, if you desire.

[1]
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fonts#Enabling_Bitmapped_Fonts](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fonts#Enabling_Bitmapped_Fonts)

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ComputerGuru
I don't know if the situation has changed since Spleen was first released [0],
but I would desperately hope so as it is ridiculous to default in 2019 to a
non-internationalized font, without support for even Latin-based Central
European characters, let alone non-Latin alphabets.

> Another short term goal is to add support for Central European languages,
> with Polish being the immediate priority.

Other than that, looks good and I'm digging the French literary references.

[0]: [https://www.cambus.net/spleen-monospaced-bitmap-
fonts/](https://www.cambus.net/spleen-monospaced-bitmap-fonts/)

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eukara
Awesome! The OpenFirmware font didn't work well at all with tmux sessions,
causing artifacts due to it not having the characters for borders and other
special characters. It seemed quite limited before.

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fxfan
I want to use ttf fonts on my Linux console. Is that possible?

~~~
aasasd
It _might_ be, since the console mode still can display graphics, e.g. Tux or
the distro logo on boot―afaik it's done via the framebuffer driver. So you'd
need to hijack the console mode, draw characters using a TTF-capable library,
and output the result to the framebuffer. Haven't heard of anything readymade
in this vein, though.

The more pertinent question, however, is “why?”, if you could boot at least
bare X and xterm instead.

~~~
zokier
kmscon supports text rendering with pango library, I think it has fairly wide
font support.

