altman@sbstaff2.cs.sunysb.edu (Jeff Altman) (02/02/91)
Well, I have spent the last several hours playing around with the ATM.INI and WIN.INI files. Here are my discoveries. The font which I was calling the System font (the one used in ProgMan, Excel, WinWord, below icons, etc.) is really Helv 8. So therefore, when I tell ATM to start replacing the Synonyms at sizes of 8 or smaller the Helv 8 font is no longer used but instead ATM gens up its own Helvetica 8 font to replace it. However, while Helvetica is proportionally correct as fonts go, Helv 8 is not. So all of the screens which have been developed to match with the Helv 8 font do not look so pretty. So now that I identified the problem I went looking for a solution. You might suggest that the solution be to leave things alone the way Windows had them, but I don't like the idea of letting ATM stand idle while a BitMapped font is used instead. I want only scalable fonts to be used on my system. (Or at least as few BitMapped fonts as possible. Unfortunately, we can't replace the VGA*.FON fonts with ATM.) So my next step was to start searching for another font to use instead of Helvetica as a synonym for Helv. Now keep in mind that you can use any ATM font as a synonym. So I replaced it with all sorts of things. The best I've found so far is BlackChancery (one of the ATM fonts on cica.) It looks really neat, and probably a bit more readable on a SVGA monitor. But having a non-helvetica style font as the system font really adds a personal touch to the Windows environment. What problems does it cause? Well, if you have any documents which were formatted for Helv instead of Helvetica they will now print with the new Helv synonym font instead of Helvetica. But you can always just reformat them to Helvetica and they will return to normal. I converted the Corel Memoradum to ATM and that looks really good too except for the conversion errors which still haven't been fixed yet. How about a new contest to find the best looking font for use as the system font? -- - Jeff (jaltman@ccmail.sunysb.edu)