F O N T S P E C (version 3.2) --------------- PROGRAM: FONTSPEC, a TrueType font viewer and type specimen printer. As a viewer, you can display your TrueType fonts in sizes from 8 to 98 points, using different effects and in various justification modes. In print mode you can produce quality formatted font specimen sheets in single or two column, or full sheets. You can select just about everything you can think of to customize your font specimens just the way you want them. UPDATE: PLEASE READ THE FILE: CHANGES.TXT FOR INFORMATION ON A MAJOR UPDATE TO THIS PRODUCT! REQUIREMENTS: WINDOWS 3.1 (or higher), printer. Lots of memory for both computer and printer (natch!) MARKETING: SHAREWARE (not freeware). Please feel free to distribute this program to everyone as long as no monies are collected, except for a small disk distribution fee if necessary. FontSpec: Copyright (c) 1993 UniTech Corporation 2697 McKelvey Road Maryland Heights, MO 63043 314 770-2770 SET-UP: You should have the following 7 files: README .TXT ................ This file CHANGES .TXT ................ Product's development notes FONTSPEC.EXE ................ Main program, copy it to a subdirectory of your choice FONTSPEC.DLL ................ Copy to Windows subdirectory SS3D2 .VBX ................ Copy to Windows subdirectory THREED .VBX ................ Copy to Windows subdirectory VBRUN300.DLL ................ Copy to Windows subdirectory Note: Your system should have the two fonts Arial and Arial Bold installed. Both fonts are supplied with Windows. FontSpec makes use of both these fonts. To run FontSpec just give its' full pathname to your program launcher, to your program manager, or just double-click it from the file manager. LET'S GET STARTED ----------------- Run FontSpec. You should know right off that FontSpec does nothing to your system so don't be afraid to experiment -- NO system changes are ever made. You should be looking at the Viewer form. Here you can select any typeface from the drop-down list box (click on the down-arrow to see the list). Select any font by clicking on it. You should immediately see a sample of the font in the sample text window. Now click the check boxes in the Effects frame to view your font in Italics, or bold, or underline, or all of these. The three pushbuttons in the Effects frame justify the sample text either flush left, centered, or flush right. There are five command buttons in the lower left corner of the Viewer form: Sample Text........... Displays the words "Sample Type" Character Set......... Displays the font's alphabet, numerals, etc. Paragraph............. Displays a paragraph of text User Defined #1 & #2.. Both of these can be set up to display your own customized text. More about that later. The Font Size frame allows you to select any point size from 8 to 98 points. Okay then, select a font (maybe Arial?), select center justify, select 12 point size, click on the Paragraph button bar. If necessary, you can scroll the text up or down using the scrollbar just to the right of the sample text window. You can view any of your installed fonts this way. At the form's top right, you'll notice 5 buttons: Printer................... Switches to the Printer form Metrics................... Displays information about the current font Set-Up.................... Customize FontSpec Question (About) Button... Displays a begging screen Exit...................... Ends the program Try the Question button first. Now you know why I call this a begging screen. If, after trying FontSpec, you find it useful then feel free to help support its' continued evolution by sending in your $25 bucks. Please don't think the "other guy" will send it in -- he (or she) probably won't, so I'm counting ON YOU! Okay, enough about this, but please keep it in mind. Click on the Metrics button. If you were displaying Arial you should see all of the variations available, the size of the base font, type of font, family name, etc. Click on the Set-Up button. The Page Header and Page Footer options are used on the printed type specimen sheets. If you'd like, go ahead and enter whatever you want in these two options, or you can leave them alone. The two User Defined Type Specimen frames correspond to the two User Defined buttonbars. You can enter your own text or click on the Default Value buttons to have FontSpec enter text for you, or you can leave them blank. It's up to you. To save your changes, click on the OK button. To get out of the Set-Up without saving your changes, press the ESC key. If you've entered text into the User Defined boxes then you might want to try them out now. IMPORTANT: Whatever text is selected with the buttonbars (what you see in the sample text window) will be used as the type specimen for your printed sheets. So before switching to the Printer form be sure you've selected the sample text you want. You can exit FontSpec by clicking on the Exit button at the top right of the form. PRINTER OPTION: -------------- Click on the Printer button. The Printer form displays two list boxes. The list box on the left shows all available typefaces. You can either click on the fonts you want to print or you can click on the Select All Fonts buttonbar. If you click on individual fonts you will see their name added to the Fonts-To-Print box, and a sample of the font will be displayed in the Quick View frame. If you click on the Select All Fonts buttonbar then all the fonts will be added to the Fonts-To-Print box. You can remove individual fonts from the Fonts-To-Print box by clicking on the font name, or you can remove all the fonts by clicking on the Clear All Fonts buttonbar. Note that as soon as even one font is selected a jumbo PRINT button appears. You can print anytime this button is visible (but don't do it yet). Just below the font list boxes are three option frames: Sheet Style: Single Column prints selected font samples in one line. Two Column (default) prints a page of 2-column samples. Full Sheet prints character sets, paragraphs and samples. Print Styles: This frame will disappear if you select the Full Sheet Style since the Full Sheet Style prints everything. Select the various styles you want to print. If your system does not have the selected styles available then FontSpec will create the italic style for you but it will ignore the bold and bold-italic styles if you do not really have them because their spacing would not be the same. Options: You can choose to add the time on each printed page. The date is added automatically. And you can choose to print your type samples in all caps if you wish (some fonts don't have lowercase letters). Next, select the sample size from the Points frame. If you've selected the Full Sheet Style then the Points frame will not be available since the Full Sheet Style prints various point sizes. I've found that 18 point type works best (this is the default). FINAL WORDS BEFORE PRINTING: --------------------------- First, make sure your printer is on and ready (of course). More important, you should know that it takes quite a while to print specimen sheets. Actually, FontSpec is quite fast but it waits alot for windows to do it's thing. In any event you may want to print just a few fonts at first to get a feel for what it takes before clicking the Select All Fonts buttonbar (which I'm sure you'll do soon enough). Next, you should know that laser printers require alot of memory to produce the type of quality product that FontSpec generates. As an example, you should be able to print hundreds of fonts using the single or two-column style sheets and a laser printer with 1-meg of memory, but selecting the full sheet style requires at least 3-megs to print multiple sheets (you should be able to print 1 or 2 sheets with 1-meg). Finally, when you press the Print button you will see progress activity just to the left of the button showing the current font being printed, what page number is printing and elapsed print time. Also, the jumbo Print button is replaced with a jumbo Stop button. You can press this at any time to abort your print job. If you press the Stop button, be patient... FontSpec stops printing immediately but windows may take awhile to catch up to what's going on. During the print operation, the only button you will be able to click is the Stop button, everything else will be disabled. There really is no reason to click on the Stop button unless something goes wrong... just let the program print your pages and it will stop and return control to you when everything is printed. When you are not printing, you can click the Exit button to end the program or click on the OK button to switch back to FontSpec's Viewer form. COMMENTS: -------- I wrote this program because I wanted to review my font collection in different ways. After trying the other available programs I felt a more comprehensive program such as FontSpec might be welcomed. Of course, one man's treasure is another man's junk (or is that the other way around?). Anyway, if you think FontSpec should be improved in some way please don't hesitate to give me a call. I'd like to hear from you and welcome your suggestions. You can reach me (Nick) by calling UniTech Corporation at 314-770-2770. By the way, we do custom programming also...... pass the word!