The pcfont command modifies the system console font, allowing new characters to be defined in the font and default characters to be reordered. This allows code sets other than the default PC437 to be supported.
The pcfont command is normally run only from loadfont(1M), which is itself normally run only from an init process. loadfont provides options for pcfont based on the current system locale.
The first form of the command selects one of a group of 8-bit code pages. If no arguments are supplied, all characters are reset to the default font stored in the graphics card ROM (PC437). The terminal displays the codeset selected by this form of the command in text mode.
The config_file argument selects a code set from the following group of configuration files, which are supplied with the UnixWare system in the Language Supplement package:
| Configuration file | Code set | ISO code set | Language(country) |
|---|---|---|---|
| pc737 | PC 737 | 8859-7 | Greek |
| pc850 | PC 850 | 8859-1 | Latin 1 (western Europe and the Americas) |
| pc852 | PC 852 | 8859-2 | Latin 2 (central Europe) |
| pc857 | PC 857 | 8859-9 | Turkish |
| pc866 | PC 866 | 8859-5 | Cyrillic |
Configuration file Code set ISO code set Language(country)
pc737 PC 737 8859-7 Greek
pc850 PC 850 8859-1 Latin 1 (western
Europe and the
Americas)
pc852 PC 852 8859-2 Latin 2 (central
Europe)
pc857 PC 857 8859-9 Turkish
pc866 PC 866 8859-5 Cyrillic
These code sets are supported in the following sizes: 8x8, 8x14,
8x16 and 9x16.
When a code set is selected using this form of the command, the current font is indicated by the presence of the file /etc/.font.fontname. When this file is not present, the default PC437 font is used.
The second form of the pcfont command downloads the file bdf_font, which must be in BDF format. If the -c option is specified, codesets selected by this form of the command are displayed in graphics mode. The bounding box for the font must be either 8x16 or 16x16. Other font widths, for example, 24-bit fonts, are not supported.
The remaining optional options specify the font characteristics. The options are as follows: