Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Re: .0

First a little background on how the Amiga handles fonts.  A screen has
associated with it a default font.  Likewise, windows have a default font.
If a window does not have a font associated with it, text graphics operations
to that window use the screen's default font.

The Preferences program establishes the default font for the Workbench window.
The 60 column versus 80 column display gadget in Preferences really picks
the default font for the Workbench screen.  If you select an 80 column display,
the default font for the Workbench screen is set to Topaz 8 (an eight pixel
high and wide font).  Topaz 8 is a font that is small enough to allow
about 80 columns of text on the screen.  If you select a 60 column display,
the default font is set to the next larger Topaz font (I think it is Topaz 10).
Topaz 10 is a larger font, and thus fewer characters can be displayed on
the screen.  But the text is larger, and easier to read if you are trying
to use a TV set as a monitor.

Preferences restricts you to those two fonts because those are the only
two fonts stored in the Amiga's ROM (or in the Kickstart code for the
Amiga 1000).  The rest of the fonts are stored in the FONTS: directory
on disk.  When the Amiga boots, it opens the Workbench screen before it
starts AmigaDOS running.  Since the system needs AmigaDOS to read the
FONTS: directory, the Amiga's designers took the easy way out and limited
Preferences to allowing you to choose between only the two ROMed fonts.
(Commodore is thinking about removing this restriction.)

Intuition and the Graphics library in the Amiga are perfectly willing
to allow you to set or change the default font at anytime.  Thus, several
people have written utilities that allow you to set the font for a CLI window,
or all windows on the Workbench, or just the default font for new windows
on the Workbench screen.  Since the utilities are not restricted by the
requirement that they have to set the font before AmigaDOS is started,
they can set the font to anything in the FONTS: directory.

Thus, using the SetFont PD utility, you can set the font to be Emerald
20.  It's sort of interesting typing CLI commands in a double-size
Gothic font.

However, although it is a legitimate operation to set your font to an
arbitrary font, it has its drawbacks.

Most programs that open windows on the Workbench screen assume that the
default font is mono-spaced (all characters the same size) and that it
is either the size of one or the other Topaz fonts selectable by
Preferences.  For example, if you set your font to Emerald 20, typing
backspace in a CLI window doesn't do the right thing.  Emerald is
a proportional font (each letter has a different width).  When you
backspace over a skinny character like an "i", the cursor will backup
too far and erase half of the letter before the "i".  Also, programs
need to layout their menus based on the size of the characters in the
font.  If you set your font to Emerald 20 (characters over twice as
big as Topaz 8), the Workbench menus will become unreadable: only
the top half of the menu items are displayed.  Furthermore, I've
been able to get the Workbench to crash when I set the fonts of the
Workbench menus to a really large font.

Given those facts of life, you are best served if you stick to mono-spaced
fonts that are 8 pixels high and wide.

Pearl 8 is such a font.  It was developed a year or two ago by someone
who felt that Topaz 8 could be smoothed.  He edited Topaz 8 using a
Font Editor and called the result Pearl 8.  Pearl is available on
Fish disk 61.

I believe that if you use Fast Fonts to set the font, it enforces the
mono-spaced, 8 x 8 restriction.  Some of the other font utilities do
not.

I have a friend that had a stroke.  The stroke left him with terrible
vision problems.  I set up his Amiga so that each CLI when it starts up
sets the default font of just the CLI window to a mono-spaced 25 pixel
high font.  This allows him to read the screen.

Note that you can convert a proportional-spaced font to mono-spaced
using the Fonts Editor on the extras disk.  Just read in the font,
and use the proper gadget or menu item to set the font to be fixed
width.  You may then want to center skinny characters inside their
"box" so that spacing between letters does not look funny, but that
is optional.  Write out the font under a new name, and you are done.

    Last night, I tried hacking around with fonts to see what I could
    do with FF.  About the only font I could get it to change to was
    an italicized TOPAZ.  Even other /8 fonts wouldn't work with FF
    (such as Emerald 8), so I gave up after deciding that italicized
    TOPAZ is even harder to read than plain TOPAZ.  More experiments
    to come tonight, but here's how I got it to work:
    
    run FED
    load TOPAZ/8
    use the ITALICIZE pulldown
    make sure FIXEDSPACE is chosen
    write out to ITOPAZ
    exit FED
    from the CLI, say FF ITOPAZ.FONT
    
    
    BobW
    

    
   re .-1
    
   Thanks Randy, as usual your explanation has made things much clearer
   for me.

   tom    

   p.s.    could anyone upload pearl 8 for me so I could give this a try?

   pps  I've figured out what setfont does. What does chfont do? and
    what is repfont?  I saw a sequence on usenet that went something
    like this:
    		setfont paula
    		repfont >nil: paula.font
    		.
    		.
    		blitzfonts 8 >nil: paula
    
    but what does it do?
    

    re .2
    
    FED, huh. I'd forgotten all about that. I think I played with it
    the first week I had my machine and was trying everything and then
    went on to other things. I'll do some playing with that tonight
    too. (Anyway, it sounds like more fun than trying to type all my
    household finances into the Phasar program that just arrived
    yesterday.)
    
    thanks,
    
    tom

    Could someone upload Pearl for me and point me to a directory that
    contains a good font-changing program.  I want to see how good pearl
    looks.
    
     - Chris
    

    I have just been doing some research on fonts.  I downloaded a number
    of them off Compuserve.  One was a update on Pearl.  Some are pretty
    big, up to 72 points.  All the fonts are currently on
    RESORT""::USER_DISK:[LEN.AMIGA.FONTS] .  I have only tried a few
    of the fonts up to now, so I don't know how good they are.  But,
    I think Pearl2 is much better than Topaz.  There is also an arc
    of MAC fonts and another arc that contains some type of MAC to Amiga
    font conversion program.
    
    Since, I don't really want to keep them on RESORT for long term
    storage.  What is the possibilty, of maybe setting up a FONT
    subdirectory on NORSE, and uploading all these fonts there?	 Then
    all the font based utilities like SETFONT and SHOWFONT can be put
    there also.

    re .6
    
    Failures trying to do a directory of that font area
    
    DIR  RESORT""::USER_DISK:[LEN.AMIGA.FONTS]
    
    gives a  QIO system service failure
    
    ?????
    

    I don't have any idea why you are having a problem.  I am able to
    access that area without problem, from 2 other nodes on the local
    Ethernet, without using any proxys.  Just as a test the decimal
    equivalent node number for RESORT is 36889, and the logical name
    USER_DISK translates to DJA4:[USERS.  Maybe you could give
    36889""::DJA4:[USERS.LEN.AMIGA.FONTS] a try.
    
    Is anyone else able to access this area?
    
    If someone knows what is wrong, I can get the local system corrected
    if the fault is on RESORT. (i.e. if there is some DECNET parameter
    that is off).
    
    From RESORT, I have no problem copying to/from NORSE.  I have also
    copied from TAPE, WJG and CGOU01, without problems.

    I've set up the following :-
    
    NORSE""::AMIGA:[UTILITIES.FONTS]
    
    The fonts are copying over at this moment
    
    Martin

    re .9
    
    Something is wrong somewhere .....
    
    If I look in NORSE::AMIGA:[utilities.fonts]
    
    the files "appear" to be there but take a look at the sizes ?
    
    there all   0/n  !    Anyone care to cross check that?
    
    Frank
    

    He probably used FTSV/SPOOL to copy them and they are not done yet...

    Dave - There must be something wrong. I get the system service failure
    as well. 
    
    I have also had trouble accessing notes conferences on RESORT.

    Well, if someone would give me a direction to look in, I try to
    fix it.  But, in the mean time I put all the fonts in a BACKUP save
    set and send it to NORSE""::AMIGA:[UPLOAD].  Then BACKUP can be
    used to move them to [UITLITIES.FONTS].  I'll call the save set
    FONTS.SAV.

    .11
    
    You are correct....I did say that they were being copied over, and
    I used FTSV to do it.
    
    Martin
    

    Did you're FTSV transfer actually succeed?  A day or 2 after you
    started it the file sizes were still zero.  That is why I copied
    the Backup save set of fonts to the upload directory.

    Yes, It did fail...witha really weird error. Anyway, all is fixed
    now. The fonts ARE in NORSE::AMIGA:[UTILITIES.FONTS]
    
    Martin

    Rather than start a new 'Fonts' discussion, I thought I'd tag this on
    the longest of the old discussions.
    
    I'm looking for a font that matches the standard PC clone output.  My
    intent is to use PowerSnap to highlight text on my ATonce MS-DOS screen
    so I can copy it into AmigaDOS applications.  For this to work, I need
    to have a non-proportional font (in FONTS:) so PowerSnap can recognize
    the text on the MS-DOS screen.
    
    Any ideas?

 
Bill,

I may be way off base here but won't  TOPAZ work?   I have a  fixed
width  font called PC font  that I'll be happy to upload for you if you
like.   To me it looks VERY similar to topaz 11.   I don't recall where it
came from.

    Re .18:
    
>   I may be way off base here but won't  TOPAZ work?   I have a  fixed
>   width  font called PC font  that I'll be happy to upload for you if you
>   like.   To me it looks VERY similar to topaz 11.   I don't recall where
>   it came from.
    
    Indeed, Topaz is SIMILAR to the standard PC font, but that's not quite
    good enough.  If you think about how PowerSnap works though, I need an
    EXACT MATCH.  I'm hoping your PC font was converted directly from the
    font image embedded in MS-DOS -- that would be PRECISELY what's needed. 
    Thanks, muchly!

There is a PC font available -- it comes with the Janus software that you
need for bridgeboards.  I have this and could upload it, except that I do
not have warm fuzzies about this in terms of copyrights, etc.  I mean, I
PAID money for this stuff and had to break a seal on the disk package --
definitely NOT public domain.  However, if the exactness of the match is
that important, you could BUY a Janus software package ($20-30) and install
the font.

Dave