[morhize]

Hello everyone! First of all, thanks for this forum. I’m new to the Irix community, and the amount of information I’ve found here is impressive.

I’m looking for any and all information about the FSN software. I’ve made some progress by finding the 'fsn.tar.Z' archive, which contains the 'Fsn' file along with the colors and fonts, but I’m stuck on one point: the font used to display folders in 3D (I’m referring to '/usr' in the image attached).
It’s not Helvetica Medium/Bold, nor Lucida Typewriter Medium. I’ve found some archives with fonts used by SGI, but nothing equivalent. I installed Irix 6.5 and set up FSN, but I couldn’t find anything more. I even installed Ghidra to try and find a clue, but I’ve never done that before, so I’m here asking for your help.

I’d appreciate any hints or suggestions. Thanks!

[vishnu]

Try running strings on the binary and grep the output for font.

[morhize]

The command gives me this:

strings fsn | grep font
*copyright*fontList:-*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-20*iso8859-1
*XmLabel*fontList:  -*-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
*XmLabelGadget*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
*XmScale*fontList:  -*-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
*optionMenu.XmLabelGadget*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1
*XmPushButton*fontList: -*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmPushButtonGadget*fontList: -*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmToggleButton*fontList: -*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmToggleButtonGadget*fontList: -*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*optionMenu*fontList: -*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmIconGadget*fontList: -*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*menuBar*fontList:  -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmMenuShell*XmPushButton*fontList:  -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmMenuShell*XmLabelGadget*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmMenuShell*XmLabel*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmMenuShell*XmPushButtonGadget*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmMenuShell*XmCascadeButton*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmMenuShell*XmCascadeButtonGadget*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmMenuShell*XmToggleButton*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmMenuShell*XmToggleButtonGadget*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*optionPane*fontList: -*-helvetica-bold-o-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmList*fontList: -*-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmText.fontList:      -*-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
*XmTextField.fontList: -*-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-normal-*-14*iso8859-1
String to font conversion needs display argument
Unable to load any useable ISO8859-1 font
String to font conversion needs display argument
Unable to load any useable ISO8859-1 font

It’s the same result as in the Fsn config file. Maybe a font wasn’t used ?

[vishnu]

In X Window terminology, fonts are the children of widgets. If the binary hasn't been stripped you can see the widget tree with the editres program.

[robespierre]

The fact that the characters are shown in the program with perspective means that it is not really a "font". The IRIS GL does not provide text drawing routines that allow a font to be drawn with perspective.
The letters are instead drawn as simple 3D lines, based on geometry data stored as lists of points. Battalion uses a similar method of drawing text. The idea is much older, of course, being used on vector display terminals like the Tektronix 4014, and even back to the 1950s with the TX-0.
I don't think fsn uses the GLUT library, but there is a function GlutStrokeCharacter() that uses this type of line-segment typeface, and has a proportional and fixed-pitch typeface built in, but differs by using curved segments.
fsn's text geometry must come from some other source.
To be clear, I don't think that this particular typeface exists as a portable font file, much less a named font from a company like Bitstream or Adobe. But you could check the "tekfont0" .. "tekfont3" typefaces used by Xterm in 4014 emulation mode.

[echo]

if you just want a similar looking font, it does resemble the style of fonts you see on architectural blueprints. search for "architext font" it's not exactly the same but its close. and you might try looking for "vector font" which will be like the kind of text from old atari vector arcade games. if you wanted to you could create your own font too which would look exactly like the FSN.