Byte codes for pixel maps for Ascii characters?

Question

Anyone who ever had to draw text in a graphics application for pre-windows operating systems (i.e. Dos) will know what I'm asking for.

Each ASCII character can be represented by an 8x8 pixel matrix. Each matrix can be represented by an 8 byte code (each byte used as a bit mask for each line of the matrix, 1 bit representing a white pixel, each 0 a black pixel).

Does anyone know where I can find the byte codes for the basic ASCII characters?

Thanks,
BW

Eleanoraeleanore

IBM DOS and MS-DOS used a charset in the BIOS where each character was 8x16 pixels, not 8x8 – Palmirapalmistry

@mads: this I wasn't aware of, thanks. I had 8x8 inmind because I drew my own 8x8 characters for a project back in gulp 1991 – Eleanoraeleanore

Here's a useful Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437 – Palmirapalmistry

Google finds github.com/dhepper/font8x8 – Perennial

@Pi: Add that as an answer and I'll accept it. – Eleanoraeleanore

Answer 1

Self answering because user P i hasn't (they posted it in a comment on the question).

This github repo is exactly what I was looking for

dhepper/font8x8

From the read me . . .

---

8x8 monochrome bitmap font for rendering

A collection of header files containing a 8x8 bitmap font.

font8x8.h contains all available characters font8x8_basic.h contains unicode points U+0000 - U+007F font8x8_latin.h contains unicode points U+0000 - U+00FF

Author: Daniel Hepper [email protected] License: Public Domain

Encoding

Every character in the font is encoded row-wise in 8 bytes.

The least significant bit of each byte corresponds to the first pixel in a row.

The character 'A' (0x41 / 65) is encoded as { 0x0C, 0x1E, 0x33, 0x33, 0x3F, 0x33, 0x33, 0x00}

0x0C => 0000 1100 => ..XX....
0X1E => 0001 1110 => .XXXX...
0x33 => 0011 0011 => XX..XX..
0x33 => 0011 0011 => XX..XX..
0x3F => 0011 1111 => xxxxxx..
0x33 => 0011 0011 => XX..XX..
0x33 => 0011 0011 => XX..XX..
0x00 => 0000 0000 => ........

To access the nth pixel in a row, right-shift by n.

                     . . X X . . . .
                     | | | | | | | |
(0x0C >> 0) & 1 == 0-+ | | | | | | |
(0x0C >> 1) & 1 == 0---+ | | | | | |
(0x0C >> 2) & 1 == 1-----+ | | | | |
(0x0C >> 3) & 1 == 1-------+ | | | |
(0x0C >> 4) & 1 == 0---------+ | | |
(0x0C >> 5) & 1 == 0-----------+ | |
(0x0C >> 6) & 1 == 0-------------+ |
(0x0C >> 7) & 1 == 0---------------+

Eleanoraeleanore

Answer 2

Would this do?

Hope this helps.

Petra

Answer 3

There are some good ones here; maybe not 8x8, but still easy parse

Honestly

Answer 4

5 x 7 typeface would cost less space than 8 x 8.

Do you need any characters that are missing from this?

Jaimiejain

Answer 5

http://cone3d.gamedev.net/cone3d/gfxsdl/tut4-2.gif

you could parse/process this bitmap and get the byte matrixes (matrices?) from this

Tacky

<humor> I could do that . . . I could also do my own dentristy with piece of string, some razor blades and a pliers . . . but strangely I dont that</humor> :) – Eleanoraeleanore

Yes Yes Yes! A million upvotes, but I may cast but one. – Perennial

Answer 6

It depends on the font. Search Google for 8x8 pixel fonts and you'll find a lot of different ones.

Converting from an image to a byte code table is trivial. Loop through each image 8x8 block at at time, reading the pixels and setting the bytes.

Casie

Do that, post the byte codes and the correct answer goes to you. I don't have a fortune of time to spend on this. Thanks. – Eleanoraeleanore

Answer 7

The byte codes for a 5x8 type face can be obtained from:

https://github.com/adafruit/micropython-adafruit-bitmap-font

The most human-readable form is in the font_to_bin.py file in over there:

FONT = bytes((
    0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
    0x3E, 0x5B, 0x4F, 0x5B, 0x3E, […]

There are examples in the repository for making scrolling displays, but I didn't try them. However, I succeeded in extracting the complete alphabet from it by reading the bytes. Here are 5 from the 256 characters:

    ▓▓      ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓      ▓▓▓▓▓▓    ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓    ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
  ▓▓  ▓▓    ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓        
▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓          ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓        
▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓    ▓▓          ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓  
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓  ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓          ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓        
▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓        
▓▓      ▓▓  ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓      ▓▓▓▓▓▓    ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓    ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓

Laryngoscope