josephs.TTI.COM%sdcsvax@ucsd.edu (Bill Josephs) (03/16/88)
Someone asked about font editors. For the past few months, I've been
using a product from Softcraft, in Wisconsin (1-800-351-0500). Called
Laser Fonts, its a package consisting of the following:
1. Lasfonts: a program which accepts their proprietary formatted
fonts and 1) down loads them to your laser printer, 2) con-
figures width files for some of the popular text editors (Work,
Word Perfect and Wordstar 2000), 3) builds ascii width tables
for other editors (my interest since I use XyWrite).
2. Sctohp: a program for converting Softcraft format into standard
HP format.
3. Cfont: a program which accepts the Hershey database for creat-
ing new fonts.
4. Efont: a program for merging fonts, extracting characters and
replacing existing characters with updated versions (only works
on font files in their format).
5. A set of Bitstream fonts (TMS Roman in 8, 10, 12, 14 18 and 14
point, Helvetica 12 point and various Courier).
The above package lists for $195. The Bitstream fonts are good (the Hel-
vetica is good, the 10 point Roman is not as good as the HP 10 point or
even the resident 10 point in my Okidata Laserline 6 but their 12 point
Roman is spectacular). The company offers other font packages (in their
proprietary format) for the ridiculous sum of $15 for a disk. One example
contains a Classic, Classic Italic and Classic Bold font in integer point
sizes between 3 to 12 points (that's 30 fonts in all) -- and their Classic
is really nice -- almost a dead ringer for TMS Roman -- but slightly more
readable since their character spacing appears better to my eyes.
Back to character editing. The 9 point 't' character just didn't make it
for me (it was too thin -- perhaps my write white system acts differently
from HP's write black). Rather than ignore the whole font or live with
the anomaly, I used the Efont program to extract the t, fix it up by
making the upright wider (but not affecting either its width or height)
and replacing the original definition with the update. Now, the font is
perfect! I've also used Efont to merge Softcraft's set of Classic special
characters (Greek, Math, etc.) which comes as a special font into the up-
per, unused, positions of the standard classic font.
I am in no way connected with Softcraft -- just a satisfied customer.
Bill Josephs
Citicorp/TTI
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.
Santa Monica, Ca 90405
(213) 450-2258
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