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BIOSFONT(4)		     Kernel Interfaces Manual		     BIOSFONT(4)

NAME
     biosfont -- retrieve font bitmaps from BIOS memory

SYNOPSIS
     /dev/biosfont

DESCRIPTION
     The  special  file  /dev/biosfont	is an interface to retrieve font bitmaps
     from the BIOS memory.  The fonts represented are the native  system  fonts.
     The complete ASCII set (256 characters) can be retrieved.

IOCTL INTERFACE
     The  characters  can  be  retrieved using the ioctl() call.  The parameters
     are:

     BIOSFONT_ASCII
	     The call identifier for to use for biosfont calls.

     &ch     A reference to an instance of t_biosfont which is	defined  in  the
	     header file.  t_biosfont has two fields:

	     u_char bitmap[8]
		     The  output,  contains the bitmap scanlines.  The top scan-
		     line is stored in bitmap[0], the bottom scanline is  stored
		     in  bitmap[7].   The scanlines themselves are stored little
		     endian (MSB first).

	     u_char nr
		     ASCII code of character to retrieve, range is bound to 0 <=
		     nr <= 255

COMPATIBILITY
     Due to a braindead endianness implementation the driver is only  guaranteed
     to work on i386 and amd64 architectures.  These are also the only architec-
     tures known to the author to actually have the bitmap fonts.

FILES
     /usr/local/include/biosfont.h
	     The header file to include when accessing the driver.

     /dev/biosfont
	     The device node for the driver.

     /boot/modules/biosfont.ko
	     The kernel module to load when using the driver.

HISTORY
     The  biosfont  driver  was  first	written in August 2003, and rewritten in
     April 2006 when the original sources were lost (oops).  It was released  to
     the public on May 7, 2006.

FreeBSD ports 15.quarterly	  May 10, 2006			     BIOSFONT(4)

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