Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!samsung!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!hacgate!tcville!koo
From: koo@tcville.HAC.COM (Frances Koo)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Calligrapher?
Summary: brief review
Message-ID: <305@tcville.HAC.COM>
Date: 18 Nov 89 01:01:42 GMT
References: <767@orange9.qtp.ufl.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Hughes EDSG,El Segundo,CA
Lines: 45

I have Calligrapher at home.  It is just for my personal use and
it is very good and has a great deal of flexibility.

YES, you can create Colorfonts with Calligrapher.  And it allows
you to load a picture (e.g. a pattern) and then fill the font
with the pattern in a number of ways (e.g. centered, random
cookie cutting, and more).

The Calligrapher works by the layer concept, which means that
each character of a font is made up of a number of layers.
And each layer could have a different size, offset (great
for making shadows), color, or pattern.

I have only used one other font design program in the past
(FontWorks for the Apple ][). Calligrapher is much faster and
very good for what I want to do.

Although designing a font from scratch is slow and tedious (you
have to use the Calligrapher editor), you could modify existing
fonts very easily (i.e. create desired font sizes, add layers,
change the colors, etc.).
There are also commands for adjusting kerning and spacing, and your
font can have up to 32 (or is it 16?) colors.

You may preview the fonts before you save the changes, and you can
also define the range of the font (e.g. upper case A-Z only, all
132 characters, or anything you want.)

The Calligrapher also comes with font moving utilities, and
the manual contains instructions on how to use ColorFonts
in DPaint II.

One drawback is that the Calligrapher character editor is rather
limited...it would be perfect if I could use DPaint III
to edit/create the characters.

All in all, I would say that Calligrapher is a good program, and
it provides enough capabilities and is good for someone who is
willing to spend some time creating custom fonts.
Reading the manual is boring but necessary.
Once you understand how the fonts are modified, it is not too
difficult, but I still refer to the manual occasionally for some
operations.

    Frances Koo   (koo@tcville.hac.com)