Generating labeled images for each glyph in a bitmap font file

Question

Is there an easy way to generate a labeled bitmap image for each glyph contained in a given bitmap font file?

I'm trying to convert a collection of Japanese .bdf fonts into a format usable in MATLAB and C++, where each glyph is used as the OCR classification key for the character it represents.

Answer 1

FontForge has support for Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF) files. You can probably export a BMP files from there. I also found bdf2png. You can read up on the BDF specification and implement your own solution, which doesn't seem too bad as the format is in ASCII.