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Text File | 1995-03-19 | 11.8 KB | 231 lines

ShowFont 3.3 - by Arthur Johnson Jr. ==================================== Last update date - 02/11/89 --------------------------- **************************************************************************** * To see just the changes since revision ?.?, check out the improved * * "Revisions n' Updates" section at the end of this documentation! * **************************************************************************** This program allows you to quickly and painlessly view all 256 characters in a typical font. I wrote it because using FontEd or (choke!) NotePad to see what a font looks like can be slow, tedious, monotonous, etc. To use this program, simply type "ShowFont [font_name] [font_size]". Both the [font_name] (Topaz, Ruby, etc.) and [font_size] (8, 12, etc.) are purely optional. If you do not specify a size, ShowFont will check all your available fonts and then show you what sizes/styles of the font you wanted exist. If you also omitted the font, you can select what font/size/style to see by using the font requester. More on this below. Note that you currently cannot select a [font_style] to see. You must do this through the requester. Also, ShowFont currently hits the fan when it encounters a SIZE with multiple styles, i.e., italics AND underlined. It won't bomb, but it "has trouble" finding/displaying the correct font. I'll try to fix this in version 3.4. By the way, if someone makes an icon for this program, it might just run from WorkBench. Since I never use WorkBench, I haven't bothered testing this. (Version 3.3 note: What? Load WorkBench? Feh.) So, what's the font selector like? Well, I've tried to make it pretty standard, including all the neat features most of the better ones have. To select a font, size, or style, simply click on it with the left button. When you have the desired font, size, and style selected, press the OK button. You can now (3.1) just double-click on the font, size, or style to view the font, size, and style you like. To scroll around the font, size, and style lists, click on the arrows or slider gadgets. Since you've probably used their like in other programs, you probably already know what they do. Note that you can hold down the left button over these gadgets and the list will scroll rapidly (Version 3.2 note: extremely rapidly) in the direction of the arrow you're over. You can also do this with the slider gadget and move up and down to scroll over the whole list. To stop the scrolling, release the button. If you decide you really don't want to look at a different font than what you had been checking out, press the CANCEL button. /**************************************************************************/ /* Because most everyone changes their Preferences colors, the */ /* colors I mention below might not be correct for your system. Just */ /* translate what the colors should be on your system (if you've changed */ /* them). The original colors were blue, white, black, and orange (in */ /* order of how you can change them in Preferences). Just look to see */ /* what your colors are where and things should be pretty easy to */ /* understand. Then again, they may not. */ /**************************************************************************/ If the sizes of the font you've selected are printed in WHITE, the font is non-proportional (TOPAZ). If they are printed in ORANGE, they are proportional (most everything else). I added this so you can easily see what fonts you may have are non-proportional, since they are real nice when trying to make tables and stuff that needs to be columnarly [sic?] organized. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, non-proportional fonts take up the same number of pixels per character, i.e., an 'i' takes as much space as an 'm'. Proportional fonts space the characters according to how wide they are, i.e., an 'i' would definitely take less space to write than an 'm'. Don't know what a pixel is? Pixels are the small dots that can be seen if you press your face to your terminal screen. What's a terminal screen? Well, etc., etc. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The above explanation is a perfectly good RECURSIVE DEFINITION example. But anyway, back to the documentation. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Clicking CANCEL when you've just booted the program without any default font will cause the program to display TOPAZ 11 (if it exists). I don't know why it doesn't use TOPAZ 8. I've tried to tell it to many times and in many ways, but it ignores me. C'est la vie. But you would never do that anyway, would you? Someday, I'll try to track down and eliminate this one-time fault. Version 3.3 note: I HATE THIS PROBLEM!!! * NOTE * ShowFont looks in the FONTS: directory for all its fonts. If you wish to look in another fonts directory (because you split up your fonts into separate directories to please programs like DPaint), exit ShowFont, re-ASSIGN FONTS: to whatever directory you like, and then re-run ShowFont. For a change, I think I will try to organize this documentation a bit by listing all the menus and what each selection does. If this is too orderly for you, please call and tell me and I'll try to make it more confusing next time. Menu - Option What is it? -------------------- ----------- Project - About Gives some useless information about the program. Project - Quit Exits the program. Fonts - Font Selection Brings up the font selecting requester. Screen - 320 x 200 Changes the screen size to 320 x 200. Screen - 320 x 400 Uhm... Screen - 640 x 200 Duh... Screen - 640 x 400 ???... Notice that all the menu options except the 'Screen' menu stuff have short key-equivalents, i.e., you can press Right Amiga-? to select that menu selection, where ? is whatever letter is displayed after the neat Amiga symbol in the menu. If the font is found, ShowFont will display "font_name-font_size" in the upper left-hand corner of the screen next to the CLOSE gadget. To see the rest of the font (if all 256 characters cannot fit on the screen at once), use the three gadgets on the right-hand side of the screen. Again, their function closely resembles their appearance. Fiddle around for about three seconds and you will be quite familiar and comfortable with scrolling around a font. Again, you can just hold down the button and scroll happily in whatever direction you like. Note that actually all 256 characters will not be displayed if there are blank (empty) characters. The program will skip them, since they are rather uninteresting, being blank. The program will display that segment of the characters that the font says should be displayed. Two-to-one someone has some neat secret graphics just outside the official display range, but we'll never know. As of version 3.3, I've added the ability to find out just how to get that neat graphics character you see. Just click on the character, and a little requester will pop up and tell you what keys to press to get it. The alphabetic keys (A -> Z) will all be in upper-case. That does NOT mean you have to (for example), press ALT-SHIFT-A when you see 'ALT-A'. Just press the ALT and then the A keys. Only press SHIFT when it explicitly tells you to. The lowercase 's' and 'm' you might see refer to the SPACE BAR and KEYPAD MINUS (-), respectively (not sexual practices - whoops!). * NOTE * Anything telling you to press CONTROL-[ALT-]_ is suspicious, as I did not have a table for the characters from decimal 0 -> 31, and 128 -> 159. Take the "press..." advice with a grain o' salt for these characters. If some kind soul will send me a complete keymap with those values noted, I will add them. Note that CONTROL-? or CONTROL-ALT-? means that ShowFont THINKS you press CONTROL (or CONTROL-ALT) to get that character, but does not know what particular key. Sorry. Hopefully, that'll all be cleared up in 3.4. To exit the program, click on the CLOSE gadget or select the menu "Quit" option or press Right-Amiga-Q. I like three ways to end a program! Actually, you can also end the program by: 1) Control Amiga-Amiga 2) Turning off your computer's power 3) Striking the system with great force with a large, blunt object That now makes a total of six ways to terminate the program. I'm sure clever people will find even more imaginative and useful ways to end the font session. I guess the best advice I can give you for using and understanding this program is to type 'showfont' from CLI and fiddle around for a while until you either comprehend all the features or delete the program in a fit o' passion. In fact, most bugs are detected this way through random menu and gadget selecting. I'll apologize now for this rather random and odd documentation file, but I'm usually dazed and confused after my program successfully runs without any apparent bugs. On a technical note, the Lattice 5.0 C "big" compiler and global optimizer compiled this program without comment. I like that. I used the following to compile the program: lc -g -L -M -O showfont sfstructs fixhunk showfont I would like to thank the National Type Foundry for sending me some fonts, and the CityDesk creators for that program. As you might have guessed from reading all the references to version 3.4, it'll probably be a while before it comes out. College is actually getting rather time-intensive, so I don't know when the next version will be available. I thought that the new feature (and the embarrassing bug fix) warranted a release of 3.3. Especially since 3.4 might have to wait for the Amiga 3000. 8-) That's it! Any comments/questions/suggestions/flames/improvements/ etc., can be directed to the following address: ***************************** * Arthur Johnson Jr. * * 225 Montego Bay Court * * Merritt Island, FL 32953 * * (407) 277-0548 * ***************************** ...or any of the following electronic addresses: Arthur Johnson Jr. -=> {uiucuxc, hoptoad, petsd}!peora!rtmvax!bilver!alj -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -=> alj@bilver.UUCP -=> PLink: DUNG -=> GEnie: A.JOHNSONJR -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- I guess I should add that this program and source are PUBLIC DOMAIN in all ways, except that if you dare to sell this program by itself for fun n' profit, you will be found and terminated. Other than that, feel free to do whatever you like with the program, although give me some credit somewhere... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Revisions n' Updates -------------------- Version 3.3 : Fixed a bug that caused ShowFont to lump similiarly-named fonts together (whoopsie!). Added "To get that character, press..." feature. Version 3.2 : Eliminated slider gadgets happy post-release flickering. Returned a satisfactory response to the system when exiting from a RUN-ned ShowFont, exterminating that error message. Polished the code up quite a lot for some noticeable speed and size improvements. Worked on the documentation some more (this will be assumed for all future versions) Discarded the somewhat useless and potentially dangerous "Read FONTS:" menu option. A few other little thingies. Version 3.1 : Fixed a bug in the 'Read FONTS:' menu selection. Added "double-clicking" selection method. Cleaned up the documentation a bit. Version 3.0 and below : These records were destroyed in the great fire, earthquake, plague, hurricane, tsunami, volcanic eruption, insect infestation, computer virus, and alien attack of 1988. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.