% Chedit -- A Terak 8510a font editor converted into a Linux psf font editor
% Jessica L. Parsons <orc@pell.portland.or.us>
% Sat Nov 11 22:54:57 PST 2017
#Chedit#

**Chedit** started out as a Pascal program (highly influenced by the
character set editor shipped with [UCSD Pascal][], but sharing no
code with it except for the comment at the top of the program.  Some
time later, after I'd purchased an [Atari ST][], I converted it into C so
I could edit the text console fonts on that machine, then put it on
DOS thinking that I'd make it run in a day or two, then about 4 years
later I found the code and modified it
one more time so that it would be usable for
[Linux][] PSF fonts.

##Documentation##

I don't have any release notes for the Pascal version of **chedit**;
there were only about a half dozen Terak hackers at the University of
Wisconsin, but I do have release notes for later versions (all from
March 1995, so you can get some idea of just how up-to-date this
program is.)

####The Atari ST **README**####

> Chedit is an incredibly inflexible character set editor for degas-style
> monochrome 8x16 fonts.  It only works on standard (not Moniterm) monochrome
> moniter-equipped STs (It may work on a STe, but it's never been tested.)
> The source is written in the spirit of Chedit on the Terak 8510a, for those
> of you into random historia, and, in keeping with its history, is written
> with a fairly odd style and almost no documentation.  

####The PC (dos) **README**####

> Chedit is an incredibly inflexible character set editor for psf-style
> bitmap 8x16 fonts for VGA consoles.  It is ported from an Atari ST
> font editor of the same name, which was inspired by the original
> Chedit for USCD Pascal.
>
> The source is written in the spirit of Chedit on the Terak 8510a, for those
> of you into random historia, and, in keeping with its history, is written
> with a fairly odd style and almost no documentation.
>
> The original README from the atari ST distribution is included, for
> amusement value.

####The Linux **Announce** file (sunsite links crossed out)####

> Since I've not found one to my liking, I've ported a font-editor of
> mine over to Linux.  This is a moderately ancient editor -- it is
> ported from a Atari ST font editor that I wrote in the late 1980s,
> and is based on a UCSD Pascal font editor that was written in the
> late 1970s.  This version is designed to work only with psf-style
> fonts (one of the formats that setfont is able to read.)
>
> The source, in case you're interested, is written in the same style
> as the original UCSD code -- cryptic and almost comment-free. But,
> unlike the original code, it's actually somewhat readable; I dug the 
> editor out of my archives and ported it to Linux in about 8 hours
> while waiting for a collection of database jobs to finish.
>
> ~~~The editor can be found at
>  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming/chedit.tar.gz,
> hopefully soon to move to
>  ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Keyboards/chedit.tar.gz.~~~
>
> where it can live alongside the fonts it can edit.

##Source Code##
* * *

=[V9](chedit-9.tar.bz2)=
    A couple of changes, for cosmetic and portability:
    1. when the program ends, ask for a keypress before exiting so any
    messages won't vanish when curses cleans up after itself
    2. replace the (ncurses?) `getsyx()` call (get x&y from curscr) with
    `getyx()` (get x&y from user-provided window) because the version of
    curses on minix 3 doesn't have `getsyx()`.
=[V8](chedit-8.tar.bz2)=
    After a **substantial** number of decades I decided to see if Chedit
    would still compile and run.  The answer turned out to be yes, after
    a few hacks to deal with glibc & ncurses namespace creep, a few more
    include files, and some (bogus) 'return 0's on untyped functions.
    And it still edits (some) psf fonts;  I'll revisit it soon so that it
    supports all the psf variant bits and psfu fonts, but version 8 runs
    nevertheless.
=[V7](chedit-7.tar.gz)=
    This is the latest version that I'd worked on, sans version control.
    If it wasn't for Sunsite, this would be the only Linux version still
    extant.
=[V6](chedit-6.tar.gz)=
    This program didn't make it into version control until about
    eighteen years after I first wrote it, and to make matters worse
    I ended up deleting it locally and had to recover it from
    [Sunsite](http://www.ibiblio.org/).
=[V5](chedit-5.tar.gz)=
    I found this, along with a bunch of other code that hasn't been
    seen for over a decade, in a couple of dusty old source directories
    on Pell.  I believe this is the earliest existing C chedit source,
    though I'd bet that the Pascal or P2 sources for v1 or v2 are sitting
    on 8" floppy in Lisle, Ill..


[UCSD Pascal]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal
[Atari ST]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST
[Linux]: http://www.kernel.org