Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!rochester!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!leah!uwmcsd1!marque!ddsw1!gryphon!richard From: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: looking for Amiga fonts Message-ID: <1448@gryphon.CTS.COM> Date: Sat, 5-Sep-87 15:08:14 EDT Article-I.D.: gryphon.1448 Posted: Sat Sep 5 15:08:14 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 6-Sep-87 08:15:44 EDT References: <1106@vu-vlsi.UUCP> <633@sugar.UUCP> Reply-To: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) Organization: Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA Lines: 124 Keywords: fonts, rant and rave, long, gibberish. In article <633@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <1106@vu-vlsi.UUCP>, sword@vu-vlsi.UUCP (David Talmage) writes: >> After playing with some publishing software, I'm becoming bored with the >> fonts that come stock with the Amiga. Has anyone out there some PD fonts >> to share? > >Yes. I don't have any, but there are some floating around. Well, I do >have a couple of 8-point fonts I replace the system font with. Yes, I have a couple of fonts that look like topaz with the serifs stripped off. While it is true that serifs make a typeface more readable, this doesnt seem to hold when you have a 200 line display with whopping great black gaps between the scan lines :-) >> Better yet, does anyone know of some Amiga software for designing >> fonts? > >Yes, it's called "FED" and it came with the 1.2 upgrade on the extras disk. 'it' is moderatly wretched. 'it' limits your font size to 32 pixels, which renders it useless when you have a 41 point font you want to edit. (32 pixels @ 72 dpi is just ~1/2" on a hires display). I've used it in spite of that of course, but I've noticed that sometimes when I do a save, the thing goes away for a little bit, then clicks and grinds the disk for a while writing to df0:fonts/filename/size, and after all that noise, *poof* nothing on the disk has actually been changed. Blek. We are starting to see some other font editors for the Amiga, Calligrapher is nice. Complex, but nice. Its a bit like Dpaint meets Draw+, but for fonts. For small fonts its more work using Calligrapher than FED though :-) >> Does anyone know if there's a standard (like IFF?) for exchanging fonts? > >Fonts are usually handed around in arc files containing foo.font and a >bunch of files with anmes like "8" and "12". You create the directory >"fonts:foo", copy the numbered files into it, and copy the foo.font file >into fonts:. The idea of using a number as a filename does have its disadvantages. If you just go and arc a fonts: directory, you end up with a bunch of font headers, and a file called 12 :-). You have to change all the numbered files to names, like helvetica/24 to helvetica.24. So you end up writing a script to take your arc file, dearc it, and mv all the files around. Ok, and them some nitwit is not using Matts/Steves shell, so you have to write something that EXECUTE can grok. Grr. *here comes the pitch* It'd be sorta nice if as well as the way it works now, ie a request for 24 point helvetica resolved to fonts:helvetica/24 would also 'reognize' fonts:helvetica/helvetica.24, this being the special case where the filename is *exactly* the fontdir name with the pointsize appended; files in directory helvetica whose name is not a number, or start with helvetica would not be a font file. I'll take the hit of the increased disk space for *all* those big names. Really. I'td also be nice if it couldnt find the font (such as 'helvetica/24' or 'helvetica/helvetica.24'), to take *one* last look in fonts: *just in case* it somehow ended up there. Once you have helvetica.18, helvetica.24, art_deco.12, bocklin.36 in a directory the tendancy is just to stick 'em in fonts: and be done with it. For a small collection of fonts this is wonderfully simple, and easy to manipulate. Yes, of course my font library disks are all organised as 'font:fontdir/size' because for archiving you want to stuff them all in seperate directories. But I have several 'project' disks that have 12 directories each containing a files called 12, and I'd really like to have just name.size in the fonts directory be recogniized. ** soapbox off * >> It would be really neat to have the little piggies and sheep fonts just like >> on the um, er, Mac. ;-) > >Why? > What have you got against piggies and sheep Peter ? >PS: Peter the pedant strikes again: The Amiga "8 point" font is NOT an "8 >point" font. It's an "8 pixel" font. The point size is a measure of characters >per inch and depends on such variables as the size of your monitor. On an >Amiga monitor the "8 point" font is about 8 or 9 point, and the "9 point" >font is about 6 to 7 point. Huh ? Whats this ? 8 is really 8 or 9, but 9 is really 6 or 7 ? You found a new branch of font mathematics here ? Is 5 really 2 or 7 depending on whether its raining ? A 'Point' is 1/72 of an inch, and there are roughly 72 dpi on my monitor. What realy kills you is not that fonts come out a different SIZE on paper than they are, (which they do), but that they come out with a different ASPECT RATIO, because of the aspect ratio the video display uses. The final printed on is correct; funny looking though it is, its the one you've been building in memory all this time. The display has been distorting your picture of it though. >-- >-- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!seismo!soma!uhnix1!sugar!peter >-- U <--- not a copyrighted cartoon :-> ^ | | | + ---- Isnt anyone going to do a unicycle in ascii ? -- Richard Sexton INTERNET: richard@gryphon.CTS.COM UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd, sdcsvax, ihnp4, nosc}!crash!gryphon!richard "It's too dark to put the key in my ignition..."