richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (03/26/88)
I'd like to address the subject of fonts on the Amiga. Support for any arbitrary font is a desirable feature, and one I'm certainly thankful for. But why only support for fixed space fonts ? Proportional fonts work most of the time when used strictly for output, such as directory listings, but when backspacing on a cli line or when used in an editor (Z for example) behavior, although predictable, is undesirable. Yes, this would require keeping around more information per character than now, but heavens, were talking about a machine that can have more MEG of RAM on it that the first IBM-PC/XT's had for hard disks. If this feature could not be supported by Commodore, how about getting it in Shell V2.08 ? ---- The other subject I want to touch on is colorfonts. Color fonts are fonts comprised of more than one bitplane. They were invented by Interactive Softworks, who developed _The Calligrapher_, a font editing program. Now, to use colorfonts, you have to run "colortext" - a wedge that makes the system handle colorfonts instead of simple single bitplane fonts. The only program of which I'm aware that already has built in colorfonts support is Prism Plus from Impulse. Therein lies the rub. The only way you can get the colortext program is to buy _The Calligrapher_ for $100, or buy one of two commercially available font disk sets that have the colortext wedge program on them. If however you want to sell color fonts, how do you get colortext licensing so you can put it on your disks with your fonts? Well, Interactive Softworks was sold, lock, stock, barrel, name and all to a company in San Diego (used to be up in the Bay Area), and the new owner is unwilling to license colortext any further as he doesn't want to have to support it in other peoples' product, a decision for which I can't really fault him. Ah but the plot thickens. A knight in shining armor on the horizon. Who ? C= I've learned that a source inside Commodore-Amiga has said on "another network" that 1.3 will have Heath's "fastfonts" and 1.4 will have color fonts capability built-in. If C= is going to support colorfonts, and since they have had the colortext program license for a while now, what would be the chance of C= releasing colortext before 1.4 as to allow artists to package font disks with the one program they (and their customers) need to make them work. Sure, in the real world, somebody buying a disk of color fonts may already havec olortext from "another source" but what about the guy who doesn't; that person is in amiga.color.font.limbo until 1.4 comes out. Comments ? -- ..who come from long lines of soldiers, | richard@gryphon.CTS.COM whose destiny was fulfilled, | ihnp4!scgvaxd!cadovax!gryphon!richard in the words of the warriors will, | rutgers!marque!gryphon!richard and protocol. | codas!ddsw1!gryphon!richard
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (04/04/88)
In article <8804010614.AA01418@jade.berkeley.edu> SLMYQ@USU.BITNET writes: >Speaking of fonts, how about vectored fonts? > > Just a point to ponder... Whole new ball of wax. I am concerned at this point with trying to get the amiga system software to support the fonts we have now. Bill Volk and crew are, I understand, working on this on BUX. If anybody would care to fill us in on status, it would be most appreciated. -- "Ever since the world ended... I don't go out as much" richard@gryphon.CTS.COM rutgers!marque!gryphon!richard
lee@uhccux.UUCP (Greg Lee) (04/04/88)
From article <3107@gryphon.CTS.COM>, by richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton):
" In article <8804010614.AA01418@jade.berkeley.edu> SLMYQ@USU.BITNET writes:
" >Speaking of fonts, how about vectored fonts?
" >
" > Just a point to ponder...
"
" Whole new ball of wax. I am concerned at this point with trying to get the
" amiga system software to support the fonts we have now.
" ...
You might be interested to know that my "hershtools" programs from
comp.sources.unix will produce vector font data in Amiga compatible
assembly language from the Hershey data base. I tried out some fonts
produced this way in my PostScript interpreter, but the display is
quite slow for all but the simplest characters.
Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu