---
name: "ucs2any"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "xorg-font-util"
version: "1.4.2-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/ucs2any"
---

# ucs2any(1)

generate BDF fonts containing subsets of ISO 10646-1 codepoints

## NAME

ucs2any - generate BDF fonts containing subsets of ISO 10646-1 codepoints

## SYNOPSIS

**ucs2any** \[ **+d** \| **-d** \] *source-name* { *mapping-file* *registry-encoding* } ...

**ucs2any** \[ **--help** \| **--version** \]

## DESCRIPTION

**ucs2any** allows one to generate from an ISO 10646-1 encoded BDF font other BDF fonts in any possible encoding. This way, one can derive from a single ISO 10646-1 master font a whole set of 8-bit fonts in all ISO 8859 and various other encodings.

## OPTIONS

- **+d**

  puts DEC VT100 graphics characters in the C0 range (default for upright, character-cell fonts).

- **-d**

  omits DEC VT100 graphics characters from the C0 range (default for all font types except upright, character-cell fonts).

- **--help**

  prints usage message and exits.

- **--version**

  prints version information and exits.

## OPERANDS

- *source-name*

  is the name of an ISO 10646-1 encoded BDF file.

- *mapping-file*

  is the name of a character set table like those at **\<ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/\>**. These files can also typically be found installed in the */usr/share/fonts/util* directory.

- *registry-encoding*

  are the CHARSET\_REGISTRY and CHARSET\_ENCODING field values for the font name (XLFD) of the target font, separated by a hyphen.

Any number of *mapping-file* and *registry-encoding* operand pairs may be specified.

## EXAMPLE

The command

ucs2any 6x13.bdf 8859-1.TXT iso8859-1 8859-2.TXT iso8859-2

will generate the files *6x13-iso8859-1.bdf* and *6x13-iso8859-2.bdf*.

## FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Hopefully a future release will have a facility similar to **ucs2any** built into the server, and re-encode ISO 10646-1 on the fly, because storing the same fonts in many different encodings is clearly a waste of storage capacity.

## SEE ALSO

[**bdftruncate**(1)](/bdftruncate/1.md)

## AUTHOR

**ucs2any** was written by Markus Kuhn.

Branden Robinson wrote this manual page, originally for the Debian Project.