Power CD/Power CD ATARI-Rechner Lieben.iso/DEMOS/FD_DEMO/DESIGNPD.TXT

Text File | 1991-07-01 | 22.9 KB | 712 lines

Font Designer 2.0
-----------------

Copyright (c) 1990,1991 PCG. Tel: [phone]
By Barry Parkinson
Distributed in North America and Australia by MEGATYPE  [phone]

All of the DEMO fonts on this disk were created in Font Designer.
The demo consists of the standard version of Font Designer.  The various
Adobe Type 1 format fonts on the disk were created using the PLUS version of
Font Designer.  The files required to create the Type 1 fonts are only
available in the PLUS version.  The PLUS version also contains a program,
TYPE 1 CONVERTER, which converts MAC & PC Type 1 fonts to .ECF format, for
editing of conversion to PageStream or Calamus. (Type 1 Converter is also
available seperately from MegaType)

The Calamus and PageStream fonts on the disk were converted from the .ECF
format using FONTVERTER, from MegaType. This progarm converts fonts in the
following directions:
Calamus to PageStream
Calamus to Font Designer
PageStream to Calamus
PageStream to Font Designer
Font Designer to PageStream
Font Designer to Calamus

The Screen Fonts for PageStream were created using a Beta test version of
BITMAKER, also from MegaType.  This program creates Screen fonts for
PageStream, automatically from the .DMF fonts, in a variety of point sizes.
It also allows you to create Adobe .AFB screen fonts to use with Type 1
Fonts in PageSTream 2.0.  GDOS 1.1 bitmap fonts for screen AND printer will
also be added if the demand is great enough.

As of version 2.0, Font Designer is no longer Copy Protected.  The
Commercial licensing has also been dropped.
-------------

This demonstration version of Font Designer is fully functional except
it won't save fonts. The save screen option on KERN_PD.PRG will work a
limited number of times, so it could be some use!

The following files should be supplied here:

    DESIGNPD.PRG
    KERN_PD.PRG
    SETRS232.PRG
    DESIGNER.TXT    - this file!
    PRINT.PS
    DESIGNER.RSC
    KERN_ECF.RSC
    READ_ME
    <Folder>CALAMUS        - Demo fonts for Calamus
    <Folder>FONTS            - Demo fonts for Font Designer
    <Folder>PAGESTRM        - Demo fonts for PageStream 1.8x & 2.1
        <Folder>PGS_TYP1    - Demo Type 1 fonts for PGS 1.8x only.
    <Folder>IMG            - .IMG picture samples
    <Folder>TYPE_1            - Demo Fonts for PageStream 2.1,Corel Draw,
                          and Windows 3.0 with Type Manager on the PC

This demo is not "public domain software", however, you have our
permission to copy this software and distribute it freely provided that all
the files included here are supplied together and that these files are
not altered in any way. Distributing this software without meeting this
requirement will constitute a breach of copyright.

***********************  Installation  ***********************

A number of additional files are supplied with Font Designer and should
be stored in the same directory:

    DESIGNER.RSC
    PRINT.PS    (required for printing.)

**** Printer Installation

If you are using RS232 connection to your printer you should first
set up the port by running RS232.PRG. Most PostScript printers use
9600 baud and XON/XOFF protocol.

***********************  Fonts  ***********************

**** ECF

Font Designer creates fonts in its own unique format  ECF (editable
computer font). The ECF font can then be converted into other types
of font PostScript Type 3 fonts can be output direct from the
program.

ECF fonts use a coordinate system of 2000x2000. This means that when
you are designing the font you are effectively working with a character
2000pts high.

**** PostScript Type 3 Fonts

These are programs in the PostScript language. Because the full flexibility
of the language is available, its possible to create custom stroked
and special effect fonts in this format. These fonts can be used with
UltraScript and other PostScript devices and with programs which support
downloadable PostScript fonts such as PageStream and FSP3.

**** PostScript Type 1 Fonts

These contain hints to improve reproduction at small sizes,
and are in a special, compressed and encrypted format. They print
faster than Type 3 and consume less memory, but have the disadvantage
that they can only be used on directly on true Adobe PostScript printers.
They will not print on the current version on UltraScript.

They do work on PageStream 2.1, Windows 3.0 with Type Manager, and can be
used with Corel Draw by converting them with WFNBOSS.

There is a special format of Type 1 fonts, ASCII format, that CAN be
downloaded to a true Adobe Postscript printer using PageStream 1.8x, the
same way that Type 3 fonts are downloaded now.  The PLUS version of Font
Designer contains a program to create this special format of Type 1 fonts,
encoded directly for use with PageStream.  Samples of this are on the demo
disk in the PGS_TYP1 folder within the PAGESTRM folder.

**** PageStream DMF Fonts

These can be used by PageStream to output to non-PostScript devices
such as dot-matrix printers and the Atari laser-printer. Basically
they will work with any printer supported by PageStream.
FONTVERTER will convert ECF fonts into this format.
The KERN_ECF program supplied with Font Designer will create the FM
and PSF files also required by PageStream.

**** Calamus CFN Fonts

These work similarly to the PageStream fonts, except that the single font
file is used to create screen AND printer output. FONTVERTER will also
convert .ECF fonts to this format.

The following is partial contents of the Designer Manual.  Many points are
covered below, abut many are left for you to figure out as you work with the
demo.

***********************  The Path  *************************

A character in a font is a construct known as a path.
A path is a shape constructed from three simple objects:

    moveto    - the starting point for the path.
    lineto     - a straight line from the current point to the
          new position.
    curveto - a bezier curve from the current point to the
          new position.

**** Closed & Open Paths

If a path is closed, at the end of the path a straight line will be
attached which goes back to the start of the path. It is recommended
that all paths intended to be filled be closed in this way.

**** Path Direction

The path MUST ALWAYS travel in an anti-clockwise direction.
Any subpaths inside the main path should travel in the reverse direction.
See the sample fonts supplied on the disk.

**** Painting the path: Stroke & Fill

Once you have the path, there are two things you can do to it:

    Fill    - fill all the enclosed parts of the path.
    Stroke    - draw along the path with a pen of a specified
          thickness.

**** Stroke Width

This sets the width of the `pen' used to stroke the path.
Font Designer allows this to be set in the Font Information
dialog.  Assume you have a font which at 72pt size you want stroked
with a line 12pts thick. The equation is:

           strokewidth=thickness x 2000/size

so our stroke width would be 12x2000/72 -- about 333.

**** Miter Limit

If you use miter joins, stroked lines which meet at a sharp angle may
produce a very long miter. To eliminate this, below a certain angle you
can force joins to be bevelled. A typical value is 15 degrees.



***********************  Segments  ***********************

A segment is a pre-defined object consisting of lineto and curveto objects.
You can use segments to create regular features throughout the font such as
the bottom serif on F, H, I, K, M etc. and the punctuation marks.

**** Creating a Segment

You can create a segment in exactly the same way as you would a character,
only using Store Segment to store it. A segment may contain
only one moveto followed by lineto and curveto objects.

**** Example

An example of the use of segments is the TYPERITE.ECF font supplied
with Font Designer. The serifs on all the upper-case characters are
segments.

Segments are the most powerful weapon you've got for designing fonts
with regular features. Used properly, segments will improve the accuracy
of your designs and reduce the amount of memory consumed by the font.



***********************  Composites  ***********************

Many of the characters in a font are built from two other
characters. With Font Designer you can add a composite character to the
character in the edit window. Once in the window, you can:

(1) Move the composite by clicking on the position box and dragging it.
(2) Scale it by dragging the box handles
(3) Delete it by selecting it and pressing DELETE.



***********************  Stems  ***********************

Most characters in a font have distinctive stems; the
E has a vertical stem and three horizontal stems, the H has two vertical
stems and a horizontal stem. Font Designer allows you to place stem
guides in the editing window.

**** Stem Widths

Many of the characters in a font will have stems of equal width.
Font Designer allows you to preset common stem widths for the font.
Ideally you should work out the stem widths you will be using before
sitting down to design the font!

**** Types of Stem

You can define horizontal, vertical, rotated and skewed stems.

**** Creating a Stem

Stems are created in Edit Mode by holding down certain keys while
click & dragging in the window:

    ALT creates a vertical stem
    CONTROL creates a horizontal stem
    SHIFT creates a skewed stem
    ALT + CONTROL creates a rotated stem

**** Altering a Stem

You can move the whole stem as a unit by click & dragging
on the line between the two control points. If you double-click on
the line, a dialog will appear allowing you to change the stem type:



***********************  The Desktop  ***********************

The icons on the desktop are (from the top):

    MODE selector
    Position indicators
    OBJECT selector
    LINK curves indicator
    CLOSE path indicator

**** MODES

top left    DRAW mode
top right    EDIT mode
bottom left    CUT mode
bottom right    VIEW mode

**** Edit Mode

In this mode you can:

(1)    alter the design in the editing window by dragging the control
    points on the path
(2)    set the character width by click & dragging on the vertical line
    shown in the editing window
(3)    create and manipulate stems
(4)    convert objects into other objects by clicking on the object selector
(5)    insert movetos and segments or add composite characters
    by clicking on the object selector
(6)    drag a box around a number of objects (or even the whole
    character) then move or distort this box

**** Draw Mode

In this mode you can add objects to the current path. Click on the
object selector to set the type of object you want to add.

**** View Mode

In this mode the screen is cleared of dimension lines, stems etc.
so you can preview the finished appearance of the character. Clicking
in the window will `flood fill' from that point, allowing you to see
how the chracter would look when filled or printed reversed.

**** Cut Mode

In this mode clicking on a point on LINETO object or a CURVE object will
cause it to be cut at the point clicked on. This permits objects to be added
into an existing path and drastic alterations made.

**** The Object Selector

These icons function in Draw and Edit modes, allowing
you to add objects to the path or convert existing objects.
The icons represent (from the top):

    moveto                    lineto
    curveto                    vertical line
    segment                    horizontal line
    composite                    angled line(not working on v2.0)
    vertical to horizontal arc    horizontal to vertical arc
    vertical to vertical arc        horizontal to horizontal arc
    vertical to angle arc        horizontal to angle arc
    angle to horizontal arc        angle to vertical arc

In Draw mode:

(1) composite does nothing
(2) the other icons select the type of object to be drawn

In Edit mode:

(1) moveto will insert a moveto after the current object,
    thus breaking the path
(2) segment will insert a segment after the current object
(3) composite will add a composite character
(4) the other icons allow curveto and lineto objects to be converted

**** Link

This icon displays and sets the link status of a curve.
It is possible to link a curve to the next and last objects, thus
ensuring a smooth transition from one object to another.

**** Position Indicators

These show the position of a point being moved, and the angle from
this point to the preceding point on the path.

**** Close

This icon displays and sets whether the current path is closed or open.




***********************  The File Menu  ***********************

**** Load IMG or DEGAS

Allows you to load a picture file as a background to manually trace.

**** Status

Displays the Status dialog:

Font units:

Controls the level of accuracy to which control points are set. Initially
this is set to 1000, making points snap to the nearest even pixel. Since
PageStream and Postscript expect 1000 points, this guarentees that there
will be no roundinf errors when fonts are converted to these formats.

Stem snap:

Controls how `sticky' stems are. You will notice that when editing
shapes that the control point being moved tends to snap to the nearest
stem. This setting lets you determine how many pixels away from a
stem this snap takes effect. Set it to 0 to switch this feature off.



*******************  The Font Menu  ***********************

**** Info

Information about the font. The meaning of some of these
entries is explained in the section on The Path.

(1) Full Name: the full name of this font, eg. Times Bold Italic

(2) Family: name of family to which the font belongs, eg. Times

(3) PS Name: the name by which PostScript recognizes the font.
    This must start with a "/" character and must not contain any spaces,
    eg. /TimesBold-Italic

(4) Notice: the designer's copyright notice.

(5) Unique ID No.: A unique number between 0 and 16777216

(6) Italic angle: information entry. The setting in degrees
    clockwise from vertical for the angle of the italic. If this is not
    an italic font, this should be 0.

(7) Encoding: information entry. Custom means that this is a `symbol'
    or non-ASCII type font with unique characters. Custom should be used
    ONLY ON SPECIAL SYMBOL or DINGBAT fonts

(8) Weight: information entry.

(9) Paint: The way this font should be painted. See the section
    on The Path for more information on this and the other entries
    from here on.

(10) Stroke width: the stroke width to be used for a stroked font.

(11) Mitre limit: the angle where mitred joins will be converted to bevels.

(12) Caps: sets the type of line caps for a stroked font.

(13) Joins: sets the type of line joins for a stroked font.

**** Dimensions

Set critical dimension for the font.

Font Designer uses a coordinate system based on a 2000pt character.
The typical capital height for a font using this system will be between
1400-1500 points, with all the other dimensions in proportion to this.

**** Stem Widths

This presets the dominant stem widths for the font.

**** Alter Font

This dialog alters the character shapes for the entire font.
It is probably best to perform one operation at a time when using this.

**** Print Font

This allows the user to print characters from the font to a PostScript
printer or to a disk file as an Encapsulated PostScript graphic
(extension EPS). An EPS file generated by this method can be printed
via UltraScript or imported into PageStream, Proxima or Fleet Street
Publisher as a page element.

Skew:

Allows you to print the font with an artificial skew measured in degrees
clockwise from vertical -- useful for seeing how the font would
look when italicised.

Gray Level:

Sets the gray level for printing from 0% (black) to 100% (white).

Effects:

There are six different effects available; outline, stroke and
inline use the Font Information settings to determine how
the character shapes will be stroked. The outline effect prints
a filled character in the current gray level then strokes it in black
-- set a light gray level to see the effect of this.

Test String:

Normal characters (from ! to ~) may be entered from the keyboard.
Characters above this range should be entered as a "\" followed
by the hex character code:

   |  0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F
---|------------------------------------------------
0  |     !  "  #  $  %  &  '  (  )  *  +  ,  -  .  /
1  |  0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  :  ;  <  =  >  ?
2  |  @  A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O
3  |  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z  [  \  ]  ^  _


So to print the "?" you could type in "\1F", the "V" is "\36" etc.
This table continues down to the hex digit "E" on the left hand side,
so to print the bottom left character shown in the character selector
you would type in "\EF".

To print the "\" itself, type in "\3C".

PRINT.PS:

Font Designer must be able to access the file PRINT.PS when printing,
so if you are printing to an EPS file and using a single drive system
either put a copy of PRINT.PS on your destination disk or select drive
B as the destination disk when the file selector appears you
will then be prompted to swap disks as required.



***********************  The Character Menu  ***********************

**** Get

Get a character from the font into the editing window.

**** Store

Store the character in the editing window in the font.

**** Exchange

Exchange the character in the editing window with one from the font.

**** Undo Last Store

Whenever you store a character, the old character in the font is replaced.
If you accidentally store a character in the wrong position, this
function will retrieve it and restore the accidentally stored character
to the editing window.

**** Get Segment

Select a segment to edit.

**** Store Segment

Store the contents of the editing window as a segment.

**** Clear Character

Clear the character in the editing window.

**** Alter Character

The same options are available as with Alter Font. Note that
when you scale or skew an individual character, any segments within
that character are unaffected. This may produce undesirable results!
You can avoid this by first using the Remove All Segments option
described below.

**** Clear Stems

Clear all the stems in the editing window

**** Alter Stems

Alter the position and type of selected stems for the character. See
the Stems section for more details.

**** Load and Save Character

Allows you to load or save a single character in the .FDC format.  The
character in the editing window is saved, and a character loaded is put into
the editing window, and can be stored in a character position from there

***********************  The Path Menu  ***********************

**** Reverse Path

Reverses the direction of the current path. You can use
this in Draw Mode to add objects to either end of the path.

If the path contains a segment, the path cannot be reversed.

**** Delete Path

Deletes the current sub-path.

**** Remove a Cpmposite

Replaces the selected composite in a character with the constituent parts
that make up the composite, so they can be edited.  This is very useful to
create characters such as AE or oe, since once the two composites are
removed, you can select remove overlaps, and a correctly formed character
will result

**** Remove A Segment

If the current object is a segment, it will be replaced by its constituent
parts so they can be individually altered.

**** Remove All Segments

Does the same as above, but for all the segment objects in the character.



***********************  The Section Menu  ***********************

A section of a sub-path can be marked and various operations performed
upon it. The section is shown using a dotted line. You can mark the
section by using the menu options or by holding down the ALT or SHIFT
key and clicking on an object.

**** Copy to Buffer

Copies the section to a buffer from which it can be retrieved later.
This is particularly useful when creating segments.

**** Copy from Buffer

Copies a section from the buffer to the current position in the path.

**** Horizontal Flip

Flip the section horizontally.

**** Vertical Flip

Flip the section vertically

**** Reverse

Reverses the direction of each individual object in the
section and also reverses the order of the objects. When used in combination

with the Flip options, this can be used to make a top left serif from
a bottom right serif.

If the section contains a segment, the section cannot be reversed.




***********************  The Keyboard  ***********************

**** X

Switches on and off the cross-lines shown in the edit window when
dragging an object, drawing etc.

**** N

Makes the NEXT object in the path the current object. In Draw
mode this will select the next sub-path.

**** M

Makes the LAST object in the path the current object.

**** Undo.

Undo the last alteration made to the character.

**** Delete

Deletes the current object. If a section is marked this will be deleted.

**** BackSpace

Deletes the currently selected composite.

**** Zoom

Normally, when you change the zoom level, the window jumps back to
where it was last time at that particular level. This is slightly
unusual behaviour but very useful for jumping around the character.
If you hold down the ALTERNATE key while selecting a zoom, the window
will behave normally (zooming in or out from the current position).



***********************  The Mouse  ***********************

**** Stems

See the Stems section for details.

**** Dragging Objects

You can select an object that is underneath another object by holding
down the CONTROL key while clicking.



*******************  KERN_ECF.PRG  ***********************

This program loads an ECF font and allows you to set
the kerning between pairs of characters (using the video-recorder
type controls on the menu bar).

**** Installation

KERN_PD requires the file KERN_ECF.RSCto be present
in the same directory when the program is run.

To kern characters, simply type the characters you wish to kern.  Place the
mouse cursor between them and use the controls at the top of the screen.
Backspace over characters to remove them from the screen to make room for
others.

**** Save Screen

This option allows you to save the screen in Degas hi-res PI3 format.

**** Base Character

Brings up a character selector showing all the characters with kerning
pairs.

**** Kern Character

Brings up a character selector showing all the kern characters for
the current base character (the character to the left of the cursor).

**** View Options

Allows you to alter the size of the displayed characters (up to a maximum
of 300pt) and the units in which the kerning distance is displayed.

            --------------------

Copyright (c) 1990,1991 PCG Software
Distributed by MEGATYPE Software