Minecraft Forums

Before I start, however, I'd like to give some info about how to use section-sign formatting codes:
The section sign, §, is used in Minecraft to format text in chat, signs, the end credits, and now, even in books. To use a code, you type/paste §, followed by a number or letter which tells it what to do. The code will become invisible, and affect all text following it. These are all known format codes in Minecraft:

• §k is used in the End Poem, when the supernatural beings say words not meant for your eyes. Using it ingame will make all characters except spaces flash randomly as many different characters. It is currently the only animated format code.
• §l creates bold text. This may not work properly on foreign or special characters.
• §m creates striked text.
• §n creates underlined text.
• §o creates italic text. This one doesn't feel too Minecraft-like, as the text's pixels no longer have straight edges.
• §[0-f, hexadecimal] creates colored text. See Color codes.
• §r resets any of the previous styles so text after it appears normally.

Thank the Minecraft wiki for the above list; I only added some additional notes.
Format codes can stack, if you use one after another. However, color codes must go first, because they cancel all formatting before coming into effect, similar to §r. So, for example, bold red flashing text would have the code §4§k§l before it.

You can copy any of these codes from here (or anywhere) and paste them right into a book to use them! You can also just copy the section sign § on its own, and paste it in a book whenever you need it. You'll see your cursor turn white for a moment, with a flashing white 0/7 (it flips between 0 and 7) where you just typed. Typing any valid format command (0-9, a-f, k-o, or r) will make this disappear, and any text typed after it will take on the format.

Some technical info:

Now, unfortunately different fonts are not as easy as formatting text. Again, it's not an actual hack, just a trick.

In the image above, you see "fullwidth characters" as they appear in Minecraft. You can convert ordinary text into fullwidth text with a converter such as this, and copy and paste it into Minecraft. There may be a dotted box with some letters at the start sometimes - if this happens, paste the text in Notepad first, go to the start of the text, and try deleting the invisible character that's hiding there - copying into Minecraft should work as normal now.

Note that the amount of fullwidth characters which fit on a single line is tricky to predict. I tried making a title page with them, but it was very hard to center because I could only have a few spaces before a line before it tried to take up more than one line. This will likely be easier once the game allows us to move the typing cursor around (hopefully it does, some day).

Custom fonts are possible with texture packs, but you need MCPatcher for them to work properly. The file containing full-width characters is "glyph_FF.png", in the "font" folder of minecraft.jar:

Here is an example of what a custom font texturepack with MCPatcher may look like:


Technically, you could have any number of custom fonts using texture packs (or at least 222, at any rate ), but any font except the fullwidth font would be much harder to work with, unless of course you made your own converter program.

The workaround is actually very simple, fortunately. Remember the formatting codes from above? The ones using the § sign? It turns out that, although formatting codes are invisible, they still tell Minecraft a line is not empty, and you can have spacing and newlines thanks to this.

I prefer the code "§r", because it only resets formatting (having no effect on unformatted text), but you can use whatever code you like. Whenever I want an indentation at the start of a paragraph, I insert "§r " (that's the format code, followed by 5 spaces - the forum may not display this correctly. You can use however many spaces you like, of course). Whenever I need a blank line, I simply put "§r" on the line, after which I can hit Enter and get a new line without any problems.

For example, the following text produces the page pictured below:

§r	A Comparison of
§r	§oThe Shining§0 and
§r 	§oEvent Horizon§0
§r
§r	 The science fiction horror film §oEvent Horizon§0 by Paul W.S. Anderson shares several similarities with Stanley Kubrick's §oThe Shining§0. They each incorporate

NBTedit isn't hard to use at all. Take the following steps when hacking any book (in singleplayer):

1. Have the book you wish to edit in your inventory. It can be a Book and Quill, or a signed book.


2. Exit your world. You do not need to exit Minecraft, just the world.


3. Start up NBTedit, click File -> Open, and find the level.dat of the world you were working in. Open this file.


4. In the main area of the NBTedit window, look inside the "data" entry. At the bottom of this, you will find a "Player" entry, if this is a singleplayer world. Within that, open the "Inventory" entry.


5. Entries in the inventory are unnamed, but you can still figure out what's what. Most normal items are packages listed as "4 entries". Books (editable or signed) and enchanted items are "5 entries".


6. To figure out what's a book you can edit, open up any "5 entries" you see. It should have an "id" of 386 for Book-and-Quill, or 387 for a signed book. The "tag" entry contains its data.


7. Edit the stuff inside the "tag" entry however you like. I explain the format in the next section, and also some specific hacks you can try.


8. Save your changes, and then go back into the world in Minecraft.

Note: if you want to make more changes after playing ingame a while, make sure you Save and Quit from the world again, and before making changes in NBTedit, File -> Reload. Again, File -> Save once you've made your changes. If you didn't Reload, your inventory/stats/etc. will get reverted to what they were the last time you made changes!

If the singleplayer instructions don't work for you, then follow the multiplayer server instructions below. This is because of changes in the recent snapshots - however, as of 12w22a, the singleplayer instructions above work normally again.

For multiplayer servers, if you are the admin, you should open a player file and edit that instead. Player files are in the "players" directory of your server's world folder. When opened, the player file will contain an "Inventory" entry at the top level - from this point, you can continue from Step 5 above. Note that the player should be logged out when you are editing their inventory!

The "tag" entry of a book has the following contents:

• "pages", a list of Strings.
• Any number of untitled String entries
• "author", a String entry which only exists for signed books.
• "title", a String entry which only exists for signed books.

Now, what does this all mean? What exactly can you hack?
Well, for starters, remember when I said a book cannot have any more than 50 pages? That's just because the game does not let you make more than 50 .
Books with more than 50 pages

Un-signing a book so you can edit it again
If you change a signed book's "id" from 387 to 386, it will become a Book-and-Quill again, and you can edit it freely ingame. Signing the book ingame will work again, as normal.

Rearranging/removing pages in a book
Select the page you wish to move or delete. You can move it with Edit -> Move Up or Edit -> Move Down, or Ctrl+Up or Ctrl+Down, to move the page to wherever you like. Pressing Delete on your keyboard deletes a page. Watch out! NBTedit doesn't have an Undo function!

Editing a page of a book freely / Having more than 256 characters in a page / Having a page longer than 13 lines

Have a book title with more than 16 characters / Have formatting and colors in your book's title

Changing a book's author / Having formats in the author's name
Similar to the previous section, you can modify the "author" tag of a signed book, and your changes will show up in-game. The author's name does not even have to be a valid player name, and can contain special characters, be blank, or include formatting codes (so yes, your author can have a colored name, or even flashing random characters ). Similar to the title, your author can not be in multiple lines.

Duplicate an entire book
Old method in spoiler:
EDIT: Club559 came up with a much better method for duplicating books! Change the "Count" value for the book you wish to duplicate. Change it to the number of books you want. Ingame, the book will now be a stack with that many books, and you can split with right-clicking as normal. Each copy will have the full contents of the book!