markov@ruuinf.UUCP (dr.m.h. overmars) (01/09/89)
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? Mark Overmars -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Overmars |\/| Dept. of Comp. Science, University of Utrecht, | |ark P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, the Netherlands E-mail: mcvax!ruuinf!markov
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (01/10/89)
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 ' Unix Project Information Systems
dickey@ssc-vax.UUCP (Frederick J Dickey) (01/10/89)
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? FONTS! is supposed to do this.
markov@ruuinf.UUCP (dr.m.h. overmars) (01/11/89)
Thanks for the information on Fontz. I am surely interested in public domain GDOS fonts (saves me the work of translating them). Turbo ST and G+plus do indeed some incredible things. I have tested Turbo ST for a Dutch Atari journal and was quite pleased with it then. Unfortunately, in the meantime I have found more and more programs that give problems. Some not very directly. For example, the KUMA resource construction set does not work completely well (although it seems you only get problems with very large forms). So whenever something does not work well I first remove Turbo ST (which fortunately can be done without resetting). -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Overmars |\/| Dept. of Comp. Science, University of Utrecht, | |ark P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, the Netherlands E-mail: hp4nl!ruuinf!markov
woodside@ttidca.TTI.COM (George Woodside) (01/11/89)
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? This feature is readily available in the program FONTZ! by NEOCEPT. It will read and convert Mac fonts, DEGAS fonts, and a couple others, to GDOS fonts. It also provides a powerful font editor. Be wary of one thing when using FONTZ!, however: It adds three words of data to the font file (if you let it). These words state the size of the pixel on the output device. They are not a standard part of a GDOS font file, and will cause some less robust programs to crash when the unexpected data is encountered. FONTZ! will allow you to edit a font without inserting the size data, but it won't allow you to take it out, once it has been inserted. Other than that, FONTZ! is a very nice program. It has a few minor bugs, but nothing worth making an issue of. -- *George R. Woodside - Citicorp/TTI - Santa Monica, CA *Path: ..!{philabs|csun|psivax}!ttidca!woodside
to_stdnet@stag.UUCP (01/12/89)
From: dynasoft!john@stag.UUCP (John Stanley) [hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) wrote...] > 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.) Wrong... (Why do people assume something doesn't (and "never will") exist just because they haven't heard about it yet...?) 1) Arc for the Mac does exist...! You CAN "just arc things up and send one big file". It works just fine. I don't have a copy but I've seen a friend use it on his Mac to arc and unarc stuff for/from a non- Mac BBS system. 2) If you packed all your fonts into a Mac style .pit archive, there is a program for the ST called UNPIT.TTP that will extract the fonts for you. I've used this for getting stuff from a Mac BBS. -- PS: My Reply-To address gets munged by the gateway I'm currently using for news access so you can't just <r>eply to this article and have your message get to me. Please use the address below instead. --- John Stanley <dynasoft!john@stag.UUCP> Software Consultant / Dynasoft Systems
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (01/12/89)
In article <695@stag.UUCP> to_stdnet@stag.UUCP writes: >[hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) wrote...] >> There's no Mac ARC, (and never will be, most likely) so you can't just > > Wrong... (Why do people assume something doesn't (and "never will") >exist just because they haven't heard about it yet...?) > > 1) Arc for the Mac does exist...! You CAN "just arc things up and >send one big file". It works just fine. I don't have a copy but I've >seen a friend use it on his Mac to arc and unarc stuff for/from a non- >Mac BBS system. Well well... In fact, I have a copy of MacArc 0.3 (or thereabouts.) All it does is extraction. My source never did come up with a 1.0 release that did all the compression as well, so I naively assumed it didn't exist. Mea culpa. (Hey, we've had this 0.3 copy for over 2 years and heard nothing from the author ever since. It was a natural assumption, particularly with the rapid acceptance of Stuffit...) > > 2) If you packed all your fonts into a Mac style .pit archive, there is >a program for the ST called UNPIT.TTP that will extract the fonts for you. >I've used this for getting stuff from a Mac BBS. Hm. Packit went through about 3 major revisions as I recall, not all of which were compatible. But, it's worth a try, I guess. It didn't occur to me because Stuffit just completely overtook the Mac scene here at UM. Meanwhile.... Back to hacking. -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems
covertr@gtephx.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) (01/17/89)
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? > > Mark Overmars There is a program called FONTZ! from Neocept which can convert Mac screen fonts into GDOS fonts. IT costs about $40. FONTZ! has a couple of restrictions. You can only have one font size in the MAc font. FONTZ! can covnert Amiga fonts as well. FONTZ! is very good if you use GDOS programs. Look for GPLUS from Codehead Software. GPLUS is a fast replacement for the Atari GDOS. Richard (GDOS is a memory hog) Covert
covertr@gtephx.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) (01/17/89)
Howard, how about posting those new GDOS Mac fonts??I have a SLM804 and could really use some new GDOS fonts. I own FONTZ! but don't have access to Mac fonts. I could rescale your fonts to 300dpi for my laser printer . So, could you uploaf them here, or can I mail you a floppy, or something?? Thanks!!
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (01/24/89)
In article <40e6d93d.14e07@gtephx.UUCP> covertr@gtephx.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) writes: >Howard, how about posting those new GDOS Mac fonts??I have a SLM804 >and could really use some new GDOS fonts. I own FONTZ! but don't have >access to Mac fonts. I could rescale your fonts to 300dpi for my laser printer >. > >So, could you uploaf them here, or can I mail you a floppy, or something?? > >Thanks!! It'll be a couple weeks before I can post them, as I'm going leaving town for a while... Also, does anyone know whether it would be legal to post converted Mac system fonts? I.e., the standard fonts included on a typical Macintosh system disk? [Chicago, Monaco, Geneva, etc...] (Please mail replies. Legal discussions on Usenet tend to get messy... }-) -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems