mij@IDA.LiU.SE (Michael Jansson) (05/13/91)
[ There has been some problems uploading vfont to ab20.larc.nasa.gov ]
[ (presumably, full disks), but the authors promise to keep trying. ]
[ It will be called vfont2_0.lzh (use FILES.Z). It has also been ]
[ submitted to comp.binaries.amiga. -Dan ]
The vFont Package - A font machinery for Amiga.
1. Short overview
-----------------
The vFont Package is a font rendering system that will extend the Amiga so
that it will be able to utilize vectorized outline fonts.
The package consist of a number of parts. The most important part is the
vFont library which is the machinery that builds the outline fonts from
several kinds generic font descriptions. The other parts are:
Curve Outline Painter (COP):
A full feature WYSIWYG font editor that will enable you to create
your own outline fonts as well as any other font type that is
supported by the use of xdf libraries, e.g. you can use it to edit
plain bitmap font instead of using FED.
External Diskfont Format libraries (xdf_#?.library):
It would be foolish to ignore the fact that there exist a vast
amount of different types of font machineries (Postscript, LaTeX,
AGFA etc). The XDF-libraries are used to open the doors for these
fonts. These libraries understands a specific font format so that
you can access fonts from other computers on your machine. (The idea
of having external libraries so that you can extend your system by
adding new libraries is also known in the modem world as XPR
libraries). There are currently five XDF-libraries, and more are
being implemented.
FontContents Lint (CheckFonts):
CheckFonts is a utility that allows you to scrutinize your
FontContents files, i.e. the #?.font files that are found under
Fonts:. It can be used to add FontContents files to your
Workbench disc and still have the actual font files on the
Extras disc. It can also be used to fix a bad FontContents file,
without touching the others and to create new FontContents files
for fonts that don't have one.
Demos (vmore, bmore, rotate, spiral):
These are demo programs that demonstrates various aspects of the
outline fonts.
A font generateed by vfont:
* is compatible with TextFont's, i.e. you can render VFont with
graphics.library functional and you can render TextFont's with
vfont.library functions. This makes it very easy to use the library
as an application programmer, because it is very GfxBase-ish.
* can be rendered in any direction, e.g. diagonal.
* can have any size, i.e. it can be resized in width and height independently.
* can have characters rotated independently of the rendering path, e.g you can
render from left to right but have the characters rotated towards west.
* is fast to render. Normal speed when rendered in normal left-right fashion
or 3K+ cps on a 68020 CPU in any direction/size.
2. Compatibility
----------------
This software is fully compatible with:
* Any currently existing Amiga model, i.e. A1000,A500,A2000,A2500,A3000.
* Any currently existing OS, i.e. 1.2, 1.3, 2.0x.
3. Price
--------
It's shareware, so I am recommending that you send 20$ to me if you like it.
Read the included shareware notice in the archive for more details.
4. Release date
---------------
Now! (Should have been six month ago ;-)
5. Address
----------
I will be away on holiday for five month, so I am leaving a friend of
mine in charge of project while I am away.
Michael Jansson c/o Jonas Petersson
Albrektsvagen 113A
S-603 53 Norrkoping
mij@ida.liu.se
6. Requirements
---------------
* No hardware requirement.
* 512K bytes or 1024K bytes graphics memory if you want to use COP.
7. Copy protection
------------------
None. Unregistered users have to live with an annoying requesters that
pops up, though all functionality is still there for unregistered users.
It is installable on HD and it multitasks.
8. Where to get it
------------------
It should be available on ab20.larc.nasa.gov [128.155.23.64] as soon as
I can get over the net. I will also submit it to comp.amiga.binaries.
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