Hershey is a textual vector format.

Originally created in 1967, the Hershey Fonts are among the earliest digital representations of type. A Hershey vector font file(.jhf) is a text-file in which each line represents a glyph encoded in five parts:

• id[5]: The id of the glyph in decimal.
• length[3]: The number of points, in decimal.
• left[1]: The left position of the boundary box.
• right[1]: The right position of the boundary box.
• points[?]: A list of points, ending with a linebreak.

A letter is drawn by painting lines between points, a point is made of two ASCII characters representing each a signed value(x, y), where capital R is 0, Q is -1, S is 1, and so on. For example, NW is equal to -4,5. Here is an example file containing 12 glyphs:

    1  9MWRMNV RRMVV RPSTS
    2 16MWOMOV ROMSMUNUPSQ ROQSQURUUSVOV
    3 11MXVNTMRMPNOPOSPURVTVVU
    4 12MWOMOV ROMRMTNUPUSTURVOV
    5 12MWOMOV ROMUM ROQSQ ROVUV
    6  9MVOMOV ROMUM ROQSQ
    7 15MXVNTMRMPNOPOSPURVTVVUVR RSRVR
    8  9MWOMOV RUMUV ROQUQ
    9  3PTRMRV
   10  7NUSMSTRVPVOTOS
   11  9MWOMOV RUMOS RQQUV
   12  6MVOMOV ROVUV

The position " R"(space followed by capital R) is special, it means lifting the pen, the position that follows will not draw a stroke. There is about 89 points of definition on each axis.

• Hershey Renderer, Uxntal
• Hershey Vector Font, Paul Bourke
• Hershey Fonts

incoming: 2026