(Do not run this program from a disk that one cannot save to, such as a CD-ROM. It will not work correctly if you do because this program messes with its own resource fork. This not only means that you cannot run it properly from a locked volume, but also that if it bombs on an uncooperative font (and there are some out there), it trashes itself. To recover from such trashings, you should keep a spare copy of the program that you do not use, and make copies from it which you do use. As for those uncooperative fonts, I do not know what is wrong with them, but they thwart some of the other conversion programs as well.)
(A trashed version of Show Doze Fonts can be repaired with ResEdit. Open the program and remove any sfnt resource and any FOND resource other than 15999. Do not remove FOND resource15999--it must be there.)
(This is a demo version with some features disabled. For the real thing, contact Software Unboxed at <http://www.unboxed.com/mac.fonts.html>.)
*Show Doze Fonts* shows all the TrueType fonts in MS (Win)Doze format on a drive or in selected parts of a drive. You may wonder why one would want this. One reason is that people in Wintel land need a way to view uninstalled fonts, and this is something easily done on the Macintosh. So if they want to preview the fonts they have on CD-ROM, all they need to do is get a Mac with a CD-ROM drive, and with this program they can see what they have. Also Mac users sometimes encounter TrueType fonts in Windows format, but not in Mac format, and it is frustrating not knowing what they look like.
Let me put this in a different way, one with a bit of hype:
Have you ever looked longingly at some of the very cheap, 5000-or-more TrueType CD-ROMs that are Windows only, frustrated because they are secret and forbidden territory for your Macintosh? Or have you acquired a selection of Windows-only CDs that may have treasure on them if only you could find a way to mine it? Then rejoice, because _Show Doze Fonts_ will convert these CDs into cross-platform CDs, at least as far as the TrueType fonts are concerned. In fact, with _Show Doze Fonts_ these CDs will be more easily utilized on a Mac than they are on the Wintel platform! _Show Doze Fonts_ will give you a slideshow presentation of the fonts on the CD, and when you see one you like, simply press the <s> key and the font will be converted to Mac format and saved in the same folder that _Show Doze Fonts_ is running in.
Though the above paragraph has a bit of hype, it is basically true.
The program has two basic commands, one to scan and show the fonts it finds and another to set up the rules of the scan. When one chooses the Show-Fonts command, the program presents an open-file dialog so that the user can select where one wants to look for fonts. If one selects a folder, the program will search that folder. If one selects a file, the program will display it if it is a font. (The program assumes that only files ending with a .ttf extension are fonts.)
The program displays the fonts it finds by printing a text sample using that font, and then waits for a while. During the wait the user can make the program do several things:
･To pause, press the P key, which will make the program stay where it is until a key or the mouse is pressed.
･To mark a file, press the M key. When all the fonts have been shown, marked fonts will be listed with full path names.
･To place a picture of the window on the clipboard, press the C key. When you have completed the scan, you can then paste this to another application or to the scrape book. However, note that only one picture fits on the clipboard.
･To save the font in Macintosh format, press the S key. This is discussed more below.
･To break out of scan and show mode, press the escape key. (Command-period will also work.) This action may not have immediate results, but do not give up. Keep the escape key depressed until the loop is broken. (However, make sure that you do not have the caps lock key down, or else the program will not notice that you have the escape key down.)
･To make the program move as quickly as possible, hold down the space bar, or set the caps lock key.
(This way of doing things may be un-Mac like, but, hey, we are showing WinDoze fonts here! Actually, because of the weird things this program has to do to work correctly, it is very difficult to have a normal Mac interface.)
In addition to the type samples, _Show Doze Fonts_ gives the name of the font as it is stored internally in the TrueType file, the copyright notice, and the name of the file (with path if you want it.) Sometimes the name of the font or the copyright notice is not correctly put into the TrueType file. If there is no name, the program will substitute the name of the file, and if there is no copyright notice, you will get a blank. If you are looking at one of the many cheap font collections that are available for Windoze, you will often find that the copyright notice has been altered. (This common alteration is my reason for putting this information on the screen--so you can more easily judge whether you are dealing with pirated material.)
If you press the "s" key when a font is being displayed (while the cursor is the finder ready to press something), the program will save a copy of the font into the same folder that _Show Doze Fonts_ is running. (Note that you cannot run _Show Doze Fonts_ from a CD-ROM or any locked disk.) The file will have the same name as the pc file name, with a .res attached. (res are my initials--I could not think of anything clever to do here.) The FOND resource in that file is fake-but as far as I know, little is used in it anyway. Also, note that no re-encoding of the characters sets takes place. If the font you save has Windows encoding, you will have problems when you try to use smart quotes or some of the foreign letters. (Windows puts those in a different place than a Mac does, but lots of the shareware freeware Windows fonts have Macintosh encoding because so many of them were created on the Mac and transferred over by people other than the authors.)
On the Macintosh each font has an id number. These are assigned by _Show Doze Fonts_ starting from 15999 and going backward. It is possible to get font number conflicts when you created the fonts on separate uses of _Show Doze Fonts_. To resolve them, install them by putting them all on the closed System folder.
If the fonts were part of a family of plain, bold, italic, etc., _Show Doze Fonts_ breaks the family apart. The only program the author knows of that will join them back into a happy family is part of the Fontographer package, though there are undoubtedly others. For most display fonts this family break-up is not a problem because they come only in one style.
As far as I can tell, the fonts converted by _Show Doze Fonts_ work correctly. But I do not guarantee that all fonts will work or that any will work under all conditions. The conversion done by several commercial programs is much more sophisticated than that done by _Show Doze Fonts_. For many purposes the conversion done by _Show Doze Fonts_ will be good enough, but if it is not, the user must seek out those more sophisticated conversion programs. Finally, you might note that when the program goes to save a font but finds that the name it wants to use for the file is already taken by an existing file, it will not ask you whether you want to replace the existing file--it aborts its attempt to save. This should not normally cause any problem, but if when you try to save a file you do not get a beep, check and see if the file is already there.
The Options command gives one control over the search and display. One can decide what sample text and point size should be used. One can also set the number of seconds one wants to have the program wait after it displays a font. With checkboxes one can set the search so that it does not look inside subfolders, and one can have the program display the path name of the font. A final checkbox lets one have the sample text anti-aliased. This gives the illusion of finer resolution because it allows the use of grays, not just black and white for the illustration. Though the output on the screen looks better, using this option will noticeably slow down the program. (Try, and see if you like it.)
*Show Doze Fonts* is copyrighted 1995, 1996 by Robert Schenk.
The standard software disclaimers about liability apply. Those basically are that you use this program at your own risk and I am not liable for anything. In particular, there is no guarantee that the program is bug free or will work properly, or that it will do what you want it to do.
Sometime in the future I may give the program the power to install fonts instead of saving them into its own folder. You may think you have a way of doing this already--just run the program from the fonts folder inside the System folder. DO NOT DO THIS--you may end up with a mess. When you drag fonts onto the System folder and let the Macintosh install them, it checks for ID conflicts and resolves them. If you were to try to dump these into the font folder directly, you might end up with conflicts, and then the font you get is not the font you want.
Report any bugs or suggestions for improvement to Robert Schenk. Contact him at
bobs@kagi.com
or at
424 W Jackson, Rensselaer, IN 47978.
(e-mail is the best way to contact the author.)
'***********
Some Ranting and Raving
Please do not let this program encourage you to go out and buy those cheap CDs of freeware, shareware, and pirated fonts that are omnipresent in the Windows world. I have incredible hostility toward these things because I am a font author, and I have seen what has happened to my shareware work at the hands of some of the people who have assembled these CDs. It has not been pretty.
For an example of the mess that is out there, here are some copyright notices that I found on one shareware font CD (which is one of the better ones on the market) with my comments in parentheses:
Converted by ALLTYPE
(This was a PC program that was used to convert many Macintosh fonts to the PC. The program stripped out copyright notices and put in this message. There is a good chance that any font with this as a copyright notice is pirated. )
Converted to PC format for distribution by Reasonable Solutions
(What in the hell did this person think he was doing? Who gave him the right to strip out the author's copyright notice? One now has no clue as to the source of the font if the documentation is gone, as it often is.)
Generated by Metamorphosis Professional 2.0
(This was another program that converted fonts from format to format. Again, it was a bad decision to strip out copyright info so the company could plug its product. Again, one has no clue as to the source of the font if the documentation has been removed, as it usually has.)
Generated by Fontographer 4.1
(This may mean that the author simply forgot to put in his own copyright notice when he made the font, but it can also mean that he opened up another font and stripped out the copyright notice. I do not like fonts that do not have a copyright notice in them.)
KeyFonts for Windows v3.10 TM SoftKey Software Products, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Redistribution strictly prohibited.
(Here is an example of a font that some s.o.b. uploaded illegally and it got picked up and put on a CD by people who were not careful in checking the copyright notices.)
Sometimes even the copyright notices with a name and an address are incorrect. I have found my name attached to a font I did not design. I have no idea how it got there. But if you want to traffic in shareware and freeware font CDs, you are dealing with material which has very often been altered and translated without any permission given by the author.
I feel better now that I wrote that.
******
Now for some commercial plugs.
Back when it seemed there was a market for typefaces, I designed quite a few (about 500), which are available on a CD called the No-Hype Type CD. You can find all about it by visiting me at <http://ingrimayne.saintjoe.edu>
Show Doze Fonts is sold on-line by Software Unboxed. Contact them at:
I would like to thank several people for helping make this program better, especially Jeff Nightstrife, Bill Michael, and Floris van Sandwijk. Their many comments highlighted areas that I needed to improve, and forced me to improve the program. I apologize to them for being able to implement in this version one of their most urgent suggestions.
