PCF
Generated by scripts/gen-format-pages.py from docs/data/format-metadata/, FILE_FORMATS.csv and docs/formats-master.csv. Do not edit by hand: change the source, then run the script.
X11 PCF Font Preview.
At a glance
| Purpose | An X11 Portable Compiled Format (PCF) bitmap font: a table of contents and binary tables of properties, metrics, bitmaps and encodings. |
| Extensions | .pcf |
| Poka parser | poka-font |
| Viewer | poka-font-viewer |
| Depth tier | Parser with a shared viewer (see Depth tiers) |
| Breadth tier | B4 Summary (see Breadth tiers) |
How much Poka reads
B4 Summary. The container and metadata are read and summarised (counts, properties, structure), but the main content is not rendered.
Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-26: read parsers/poka-pcf/src/main.rs (310 lines) and plugin.json. No unit tests or tests/samples.rs; the corpus has no .pcf and .pcf-font sample. Covers .pcf and .pcf-font. The card checks the magic, lists the tables present and shows the encoding column and row ranges and the glyph count from the bitmap table. Judgement: B4: the font's table structure is summarised, but no glyph is drawn and the properties are not shown.
What Poka does not read
- Glyph bitmaps are not drawn
- The properties table (the XLFD name, family, weight) is not decoded
- Metrics, ink metrics, accelerators and glyph names are not read
- Compressed .pcf.gz fonts are not read here
Libraries
Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.
- Kaitai Struct pcf_font spec (Rust output) (candidate; CC0-1.0; Rust; https://formats.kaitai.io/pcf_font/rust.html) — Formal .ksy spec for PCF with generated Rust parser (also C++, Python, Java, Go and others); licence is that of the spec, generated code is not a maintained crate.
- FreeType (candidate; FTL OR GPL-2.0; C; https://freetype.org/freetype2/docs/ft2faq.html) — FreeType's PCF driver loads X11 PCF fonts; licence choice per freetype.org/license.html (GPL version suffix not confirmed).
- Pillow (PcfFontFile) (candidate; MIT-CMU; Python; https://pillow.readthedocs.io/en/stable/_modules/PIL/PcfFontFile.html) — PIL.PcfFontFile is a PCF font parser; source header marks it work in progress.
Sources
- parsers/poka-pcf/src/main.rs
- parsers/poka-pcf/plugin.json