rico@oscvax.UUCP (12/08/87)
Warning, constructive flaming ahead (is that possible?)....
Has anyone out there tried installing more fonts into their system?
You'd be surprised just how much software breaks or doesn't deal
with extra fonts properly... So here's three helpful suggestions
for those writing software that allows general access to amiga fonts:
1) Watch out for the number of fonts that are available, you can't
just la-tee-da and put them in a menu without thinking because
there might be more fonts than will fit on the screen. I've
got over 50 fonts on my Amiga thank you very much and I want
to use them all.
Are you listening EA?! Hint hint. A Certain paint program is
blowing it in a big way. Here's another hint "Are you there fonts?"
that program blows it in an even bigger way. Remember we're talking
about a *lot* of fonts here... the least you can do is complain
that there are too many and not use the ones that don't fit.
Are you keeping your font lists in a staticly declared array? Surprise!
2) Watch out for fonts that are available in many many point sizes. If you
put these in sub menus they might not fit well either (especially if
the main menu part is low on the screen and you use the standard position
for the sub-menu). Are you listening again EA? Notepad gurus if
there is a font with too many point sizes. Who the heck wrote that program
anyways? Must've been a real hack-it-together job... it's seriously broken.
And yoooo hooo authors of Prowrite (which I like), didn't you ever bother
to test the point-size half of your font requestor? If it needs to scroll
(with that nice scroll bar that they provide and I like) it breaks. Of
course non of the system fonts have sufficiently many entries to cause
this but I've got plenty of fonts that break it. The font name selection
part works real good no matter how many fonts I have. Nice.
3) Watch out for *BIG* fonts. I mean *B*I*G* LARGE, !ENOURMOUS! fonts.
(like only five characters fit on the screen). Don't go blindly blasting
messages to the screen without seeing what font your dealing with.
This is critical if you're writing directly to the screen rastport
(and hence clipping is disabled...) when the display goes off the edge
the screen you'll be stepping all over whatever happens to be there
(usually copper lists or something unimportant like that :-) ).
Flame off
-Rico
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[Cat food: Nine Lives, Cat Chow, Meow Mix, Crave]bryan@mothra.cs.utexas.edu (Bryan Bayerdorffer) (12/11/87)
In article <543@oscvax.UUCP> rico@oscvax.UUCP (Rico Mariani) writes: =- I've =- got over 50 fonts on my Amiga thank you very much and I want =- to use them all. You're welcome. So where'd you get all these fonts, mon? ______________________________________________________________________________ /_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/ |_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____| _No dark sarcasm in the classroom|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|___ |____Teachers leave the kids alone__|_____|_____|bryan@mothra.cs.utexas.edu___| ___|_____|_____|_____|___{ihnp4,seismo,...}!ut-sally!mothra.cs.utexas.edu!bryan |_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|