Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!mailrus!um-math!hyc
From: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Mac fonts to GDOS
Keywords: fonts
Message-ID: <541@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 89 05:10:51 GMT
References: <959@ruuinf.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@math.lsa.umich.edu
Reply-To: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)
Organization: University of Michigan Math Dept., Ann Arbor
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In article <959@ruuinf.UUCP> markov@ruuinf.UUCP (dr.m.h. overmars) writes:
>Has anybody ever seen a program that converts Mac Fonts to GDOS fonts?
>One of the things the ST is missing is a large collection of nice looking
>fonts. On the Mac on the other hand there are large amounts of nice
>Public Domain fonts. It should not be very hard to write a conversion
>program. Anybody interested in doing the job?

The guys at Neocept have already done it. Get their Fontz! program - it
lets you convert Mac fonts, Amiga fonts, and Degas fonts to GDOS. I got a
copy a little before Christmas - it works just great. I grabbed all the
fonts my housemate had on his Mac Plus and converted 'em. (It was a pretty
long and arduous task, converting a couple hundred fonts...) Converting
them for the monochrome screen is a snap. Usually just load the file and
save it in GDOS format. (Edit the global info, like font name and ID number
first. Other things depending on how well designed the original Mac font
was...)

One major gripe - Mac fonts are stored in special resource files, which
can contain as many fonts as you care to load all in one file. Fontz!
can't read these aggregate files - you must split the Mac fonts into
individual files, and then transfer them to the ST in MacBinary mode. This
can be a major hassle, particularly since the Mac system interface doesn't
have the concept of wildcard filename characters. Very recent versions of
popular terminal programs allow you to transfer, say, the entire contents
of a folder. Doing multi-file transfers, you need to use Kermit, since
Xmodem doesn't send the filenames with the files. (As far as I know, only
Kermit supports a server mode anyway, so doing multi-file sends without
human intervention is impossible with Xmodem...)

There's no Mac ARC, (and never will be, most likely) so you can't just
ARC things up and send one big file with Xmodem. You can use Stuffit on
the Mac, but you need an Atari version of Unstuffit. (I've got the source
for a Unix version - expect a posting relatively soon.)

Hmm... Big digression there.... Anyway - Fontz! does what you want. I
bought it, I like it, it works great. Not the kind of program you'll use
every day, but... (I still need to convert all these fonts for my printer.
*That* will be an unpleasant task...) If Fontz! could read a Mac resource
file with all the indexing information, so it can pull out individual
pieces, it would be even better.

BTW, anyone interested in Mac fonts for GDOS/monochrome monitors? As I
said before, I've got a pretty sizeable collection. (Not all are PD, but
a good number of them are, and there's some decent ones there...)

Since I'm on the topic of GDOS.... I also bought a copy of G+Plus. Very
nice. The guys at Codehead did this one. Very fast. Very flexible configuration
setups.

Not to disgust anyone, but I'm also using SofTrek's Turbo-ST on my Mega.
Sound redundant? They have some interesting timings on the package - showing
TurboST to be faster than a blitter equipped ST in some cases. With it
installed, I get the absolute fastest possible graphics and text blits...

Disclaimers - I have no relation to Neocept, Codehead Software, or
SofTrek. I just own some of their stuff, and I like it a lot.

Gee, one final ramble - I also recently bought Neocept's WordUp. I tried
MSWrite at the store - very slow. Ugly. WordUp, on the other hand, is very
fast. Seems easier to use in many ways. (Page size configuration looked like
it *should* have been straightforward in MSWrite, but turned out to be very
very inconvenient. Any time you reset the page size a hard page break would
be inserted in your document. Remove the page break, and the page size
settings get lost. Leave it, and you waste a few sheets of paper. WordUp
doesn't have this sort of problem...) If you've been looking for a slick
GDOS type word processor, this is probably the only one to consider...

--
  /
 /_ , ,_.                      Howard Chu
/ /(_/(__                University of Michigan
    /           Computing Center          College of LS&A
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