BDF — 5x7 Bitmap Font (digits)
A hand-written 5×7 BDF bitmap font covering the digits, a colon, and space — the classic X11 bitmap-font format, in plain text. A fixture for testing BDF parsers, bitmap-font converters, and retro/embedded rendering.
STARTFONT 2.1
COMMENT Novus Examples 5x7 bitmap digit font (sample)
FONT -novus-fixed-medium-r-normal--7-70-75-75-c-50-iso10646-1
SIZE 7 75 75
FONTBOUNDINGBOX 5 7 0 0
STARTPROPERTIES 4
FONT_ASCENT 7
FONT_DESCENT 0
DEFAULT_CHAR 32
SPACING "C"
ENDPROPERTIES
CHARS 12
STARTCHAR space
ENCODING 32
SWIDTH 480 0
DWIDTH 6 0
BBX 5 7 0 0
BITMAP
00
00
00
00
00
00
00
ENDCHAR
STARTCHAR digit0
ENCODING 48
SWIDTH 480 0
DWIDTH 6 0
BBX 5 7 0 0
BITMAP
70
88
98
A8
C8
88
70
ENDCHAR
STARTCHAR digit1
ENCODING 49
SWIDTH 480 0
DWIDTH 6 0
BBX 5 7 0 0
BITMAP
20
60
20
20Specifications
- Format
- BDF (Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format)
- Cell Size
- 5x7
- Glyphs
- 12
- Coverage
- 0-9, colon, space
- Spacing
- monospace
What is a .bdf file?
BDF (Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format) is a plain-text format for bitmap fonts from the X11 world. Each glyph is described by a small grid of pixels given as hex rows, along with metrics and encoding. It is human-readable and was the standard way to ship fixed-size screen fonts before scalable outlines.
How to use this file
Use an example BDF file to test bitmap-font parsers and converters (for example BDF to PCF, TTF, or a sprite sheet), and retro or embedded rendering pipelines.
How to use this file for testing
“BDF — 5x7 Bitmap Font (digits)” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Conversion testing, Editor testing. The same content exported across many formats and linked as a group, so you can convert one and diff against the expected twin.
Documented properties for this file: BDF (Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format). Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Font fixtures carry a small documented glyph set across the common wrappers. Test font loaders, subsetting, and @font-face; the specimen preview renders the glyphs the face actually maps.
Related files
- ttfTTF — Access All Alternates (aalt)An aalt feature that aggregates every alternate reachable through the stylistic sets and the small-cap set, which is what a glyph-palette UI reads to offer 'other forms of this character'. For testing alternate-picker panels rather than automatic shaping. Original typeface, free to use.
- ttfTTF — Contextual Alternates (calt)Contextual alternate substitution that fires on doubled letters: the second letter of aa, ee, oo, nn, ss and tt is replaced by an alternate carrying a visible baseline underscore, so a shaping result can be read straight off the page instead of out of a debug log. calt is on by default, which makes it a good test of whether a renderer applies default features at all. Original typeface, free to use.
- ttfTTF — Every OpenType Feature in This FamilyEvery feature this family defines in one face — ligatures, kerning, contextual alternates, small caps, three stylistic sets, four figure features, fractions, mark attachment, aalt and locl. The single font to point a feature-discovery UI at. Original typeface, free to use.
- ttfTTF — Figure Sets (lnum, onum, tnum, pnum)All four figure features over one digit set: the default is proportional lining, tnum flattens every digit to 620 units for column alignment, pnum restores the proportional widths, and onum drops five digits below the baseline and raises two above the x-height. The measurable case for testing font-variant-numeric. Original typeface, free to use.
- ttfTTF — Fractions (frac) with numr and dnomA real frac implementation as a chaining contextual substitution: the slash becomes a fraction slash, the digit before it becomes a numerator and the digit after becomes a denominator, with numr and dnom also reachable on their own. Coverage is deliberately limited to single-digit fractions, which is stated in the specs so a test can assert the boundary. Original typeface, free to use.
- ttfTTF — GSUB Ligatures (liga and dlig)Standard and discretionary ligature substitutions in a real GSUB table: four liga ligatures including the three-glyph ffi, and two dlig ligatures that must stay off unless asked for. Each ligature's advance is the sum of its parts minus a documented tuck, so a shaping result is checkable by measuring. Original typeface, free to use.
Generated by generation/fonts_extra.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.