Scalable Screen Font

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A Scalable Screen Font (SSFN) is a computer font that can store both bitmap fonts and outline fonts in the same format and can render them using the same API. It is Open Source (licensed under MIT) and comes with a renderer, a command-line font converter and a GUI font editor.

Format

It is a Unicode font format that utilizes efficient bitmap deduplication and geometrical transformations on outlines, therefore a font stored in Scalable Screen Font format requires usually only 50% - 40% storage space compared to other font formats. It also stores per-glyph metrics for proportional fonts, and can mix bitmap and outline layers within the same glyph. Colorized glyphs and user specified ligatures also supported.

Unlike many other font formats and just like TrueType, Scalable Screen Font supports storing licensing information on the font typeface.

Renderer Library

The renderer is an Open Source C/C++ single header library, with emphasis on embeddability and ease of use. Single header implementation (also called stb-style header) provides Single Compilation Unit without using a linker. The renderer does not use floating-point numbers and it does not depend on any other libraries (except optionally on libc). One renderer was specifically designed for kernel consoles with bitmap font support, while the normal renderer supports transparent decompression of deflated fonts, bitmap, pixmap and outline proportional fonts, and can scale, anti-alias and kern glyphs.

The renderer is extremely small (less than 32k when compiled on x86) and its simple API makes it popular among hobby OS developers.

Font Utilities

Both the command-line converter and the GUI font editor are multiplatform applications (available on Linux, Windows and MacOS), which can convert virtually all font formats into Scalable Screen Font (including, but not limited to PC Screen Font, TrueType, Portable Compiled Format, Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format, PostScript fonts and many others). Just as the renderer, they are Open Source and licensed under MIT.

References

• SSFN source code repository
• SSFN File Format Specification
• SSFN renderer API Documentation
• SSFN on OSDev wiki
• Debian ITP

You must provide references to independent reliable sources that devote significant coverage to this topic. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 20:40, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

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