Virtue

version 3.0, March 26, 1999
Copyright ©1997-1999 Marty P. Pfeiffer at Scooter Graphics. (background info)
Price: Free!

Virtue is my improvement of Apple Computer's "Charcoal"font appearing in Mac OS 8.

About Virtue:

There is a lot of controversy about Charcoal. Basically, a lot of people did not want this font to appear in the Mac OS 8. A "reverse-engineered" font developed by Greg Landweber for his Aaron extension and Kaleidoscope control panel gave people a first look at Charcoal. Greg built his font from looking at various screen shots and did a good job at making a very complete font. However, the spacing information and special characters characters seemed a little off to me. It seems that Apple couldn't decide whether Charcoal should have two pixels between the letters or just one. This lead to a cramped appearance on screen.

So here's what I did: basically, I took his work and tried to space it how I would if I was making Apple's next font. I studied the "Chicago" system font and and used it as a template for my font. After about 2 hours of tinkering, I had a bitmap font that looked really good as a replacement font for Kaleidoscope. About a week later, after tinkering some more, I made even more improvements.

Starting with version 3.0, Virtue is a TrueType-only font. There are no bitmaps, instead advanced TrueType instructing creates an excellent on-screen appearance. The techniques I used to accomplish this will soon be applied to my other font creations.

Virtue Patch Info:

The instructions for applying the patch are simple:

1. Remove any previous version of "Virtue" from your "Fonts" folder (located at System Folder: Fonts).
2. Drag the "Virtue" font suitcase to your closed "System" folder.
3. Double click on the patch that corresponds to your system software (if you are unsure what version of the Mac OS you are running, you can check it by selecting "About the computer..." from the "Apple Menu" in the "Finder.")
4. Follow the on-screen instructions
5. Restart your computer
6. If you are using Mac OS 8.1, choose the "Appearance" Control Panel from the Apple Menu and then select "Virtue" from the pop-up menu while holding down the option key.
   ---or---
   If you are using Mac OS 8.5.1, choose the "Appearance" Control Panel from the Apple Menu and then click on the "Font" tab and then select "Virtue" from the "Large System Font" pop-up menu.

If, for some reason, the above directions do not work for you, please check my web page for a solution.

Freeware Notice:

You don't need to pay a cent for this font. In fact, I will refuse to take any money for it at all. Please, I'm begging you, NO MONEY!!!!! If you want to spend some money, take a look at some of my other fonts previewed here and buy them from my website. You may consider registering any of my other fonts as a registration for Virtue, if you like. I do retain all rights to this font, so don't even think about trying to sell it. I mean really, how tacky could you get.

Distribution Info:

If you would like to include Virtue on a CD or upload it to your favorite ftp site, please send me a note. I'm more than happy to allow Virtue to be distributed through different channels, I just want to be in the loop :-) Please see my End User License Agreement for details about proper use of my fonts.

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Version History

• 3.2.1--Made a small clarifications to the read-me file and added instructions to the Mac OS 8.1 patch (April 26, 1999)
• 3.2--Fixed the problem with the "Mac OS 8.5.1 Virtue Patch"; you should not get any "out of memory errors" anymore (The problem was related to using an older version of ResCompare to create that patch). Also re-saved the archive in Stuffit 4.5 format. Now everyone should be able to download Virtue (what was Aladdin thinking with 5.x?) Clarified the read me instructions (again!) (April 18, 1999)
• 3.1--Clarified the read me file instructions. Modified the ":" character so that the clock on the menu will not "pulse" every second. (April 14, 1999)
• 3.0--Got rid of the bitmaps! Now Virtue uses TrueType hinting. Modified the CMAP so that several special characters will appear. Dropped the Light version (for now) and added the patches (March 26, 1999--not quite a year :-)
• 2.11--Fixed the URL for ResEdit (March 29, 1998)
• 2.1--Made a few minor changes to the bitmaps. Added Virtue Light. Changed the patching process. (March 21, 1998)
• 2.0--Fixed a problem antialiasing Virtue at 12 pt. Now it works, and it's pretty cool. You will need to use Greg Landweber's "Smooth Type" extension to do this. Make sure to give Greg $5 if you find that you like antialiased type on your Mac. Also added the 11 pt bitmap size. Changed documentation over to HTML. (November 18, 1997)
• 1.9--Fixed a spacing problem with the "j" and "'". (September 25, 1997)
• 1.8--Fixed the leading. Virtue will no longer be cut off in dialogue boxes. (September 23, 1997)
• 1.7--Fixed a small bug. Virtue is now stable. (August 4, 1997)
• 1.6--Wrote an Appearance Virtue Extension patch and expanded the character set. (July 24, 1997)
• 1.5--Even more spacing fixes! Created new non-alphanumeric characters to more closely match Charcoal (e.g., &, $, ?, +, etc.) (May 18, 1997)
• 1.4--More spacing fixes. Created 9, 10 and 11 pt bitmaps. (May 13, 1997)
• 1.3--Fixed the spacing of a few characters. Modified the outline for the "A" (5/9/97)
• 1.2--Fixed even more characters! (mostly lowercase) (5/8/97)
• 1.1--Name change. Fixed a few characters. (5/6/97)
• 1.0--Initial release. (5/5/97)