FONTPIMP 1.0 Copyright 1998 Lysergic Software 0. About Fontpimp Fontpimp is charityware. When started the program autosuggests a donation based on a rate of ten cents per converted font. Some charities I'd like you to consider donating to are: Nature Conservancy (www.tnc.org) The Nature Conservancy Missouri Chapter 2800 S. Brentwood Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63144 703-841-5300 Memberships start at $25. Christian Children's Fund (www.christianchildrensfund.org) Christian Children's Fund Attn: Development Division 2821 Emerywood Parkway Box 85066 Richmond, VA 23294 804-756-2700 National Association For The Mentally Ill (www.nami.org) Nat'l Alliance for the Mentally Ill 200 N Glebe Road, #1015 Arlington, VA 22203-3728 800-950-NAMI Lysergic Software can be reached at: ericlob@cris.com (Tom Larson - author) brian.hammack@rook.wa.com (Brian Hammack - main beta tester) In addition to Brian, I'd also like to thank everyone else who tested the program, you know who you are and I lost your names. You might also want to check out some of Lysergic's other fine software, all crafted with rich, Corinthian, lea.. er, well, machine language for p8. BscIT - decode and encode base64, binscii, and uucode files. GzPk - convert gzip archives to pkzip archives. Qfix - patch files allowing them to remove the ProDOS naming restrictions. 2qwk - full featured qwk mail reader. 1. INTRODUCTION When Pointless was created the decision was made to directly use Mac formatted TrueType font files. This probably seemed like a good idea at the time since the Mac was the overwhelming choice for DTP and this allowed direct access to many of the font resources available. Unfortunately, as time passed, quite a few of these resources have become unavailable to the Apple II user. The Macintosh now directly supports Postscript fonts and the font designers publish for that market first. So even if you found a font you wanted, and could extract it (which would be a problem, because there aren't any GS programs that can extract from any of the current Mac archival formats) you probably couldn't use it since there is no Postscript equivalent to Pointless. Apple's partner in developing the TrueType font technology was Microsoft, who also integrated the TrueType fonts into its Windows operating system. On the Windows platform, TrueType has become the dominant standard for all but professional typesetting. As you would expect, the number of TrueType fonts (and font resources) available for Windows now far exceeds the number for the Macintosh. Unfortunately the two file formats are incompatible and Pointless doesn't recognize the Windows format. So you're thinking: "That's nice and everything, and it's not that I don't appreciate history, but what would really be nice if there was some way to get at all them fonts." Well, exactly. Lysergic Software is proud to announce Fontpimp, the full featured, desktop-based, message center-aware, batch-processing, judgename-compliant, kitty pettin', font conversion utility which allows you to: ¥ Convert Windows TT to GS (Macintosh) ¥ Convert GS (Macintosh) to Windows TT ¥ Edit relevant TrueType font information Besides, what else are you going to do, crawl around all the Macintosh font sites looking for all the really old archives that might be Stuffit 1.5.1 compliant so you can get at the fonts with Shrinkit? 2. CONVERTING FONTS This brings up a standard file dialog, which allows you to select the font(s) you wish to convert. Almost all fonts you come across will have a .TTF suffix, but you can select from all TXT and BIN files just in case you run across the exception to that rule. You can select more than one font by Command-clicking the additional files. You may also select a range by moving the pointer to a file and Command clicking. Once you're done choosing fonts to convert, a second standard file dialog lets you choose where you want to store your new fonts. You can create a new directory to store the files in by changing the NewDirectory string on the bottom of the dialog and selecting that button. Whether you create a new directory or not, the inner workings of the dialog require something to be in that space. What it is doesn't matter. The conversion process is fully automatic since Fontpimp uses the actual font name from within the font to generate the filename (adapted to fit the target filesystem). This provides a fairly descriptive filename. Due to the length of some font names (plus their style modifiers) the names can get truncated pretty severely in the process of adapting the name to fit the ProDOS filesystem. Fortunately, Pointless doesn't require you to put your fonts in the *:System:Fonts folder and you can move them to another volume. While the filename has no relevance on the name shown in your font menu, selecting a HFS volume as the target volume is ideal since it generally makes for more legible filenames. For example, suppose you have AGB_____.TTF which is PC-speak for the font formerly known as Apple Garamond Bold and you run it through the program, you would end up with: ProDOS Apple Garam..ld HFS Apple Garamond Bold Note that for these conversions a ProDOS filesystem patched with Qfix is assumed. A standard version would have periods in place of spaces or non-standard characters. That's pretty legible since the font name almost fits the file system. But sometimes things can get a little more interesting. Suppose you wanted to convert Apple Garamond Bold-Italic? You would end up with: ProDOS Apple Garam..ic HFS Apple Garamond Bold-Italic While it's certainly more of a problem with ProDOS, some fonts have names long enough to cause even HFS to truncate the filename. This brings up another point. When the filename is adapted to fit the filesystem the truncating caused by too long filenames, different fonts can generate the same filename. To get around this, Fontpimp renames the new font. For example suppose you had Apple Garamond Italic and Apple Garamond Bold Italic and wanted to save them onto a ProDOS volume, you would get: ProDOS Apple Garam..ic Apple Garamond Italic Apple Garam..i0 Apple Garamond Bold Italic This generally occurs when converting the Italic and Bold-Italic versions of the same font family to a ProDOS volume. You can, of course, rename the files to whatever you want once they're converted. That covers the filename, what about the font? The font name doesn't have to worry about filesystem limitations, it can use up to 255 characters. That means the font can be named more or less what the designer originally intended. What does that mean? The font name table in the TrueType font contains the Font Family name, which in most of our examples would be Apple Garamond. In it's default mode Fontpimp takes the Font Family name and checks to see if the Style entry is something that can be matched to the GS style byte (that means Bold or Italic). If it does, the name assigned to the font is the Font Family name. This allows Pointless to use the different members of the font family to represent the styles you might use in your document. Rest assured that the character set generated by Pointless is much better than anything the Font Manager can whip up. So what happens if the Style entry doesn't match up with something the GS recognizes? The Style entry is appended onto the end of the Font Family Name. For example, suppose you wanted to convert Apple Garamond Light Italic, you would get: Apple Garamond Light as the font name, with the Italic bit set. Even though the Font Family name is Apple Garamond, the lack of an appropriate style setting requires that it be assigned a separate font name. That brings up an important point. Pointless uses the font number to differentiate between fonts. Fontpimp keeps track of the font families and the numbers assigned to them for the current session, so all supported styles of a font you're converting are automatically given the same font number and are viewed as a family by Pointless. You can also set Fontpimp to not use the AUTO-STYLE DETECT mode by unchecking the appropriate box in the PREFERENCES (see that section for more information on how to make changes). This sets the font name to the Full Font name as defined by the designer. Generally this is the Font Family name and the Style name, but may also include the manufacturer's name or other information they feel like including. Using our example font, you would get: Apple Garamond Light Italic. This mode does not set the appropriate GS style bit and all installed fonts show up in the Font menu. So to change the style you need to manually change the font itself. Sometimes this may be an advantage, and some people just like to look at a whole lotta fonts in their menus. If the Full Font name is too long, the font name may become truncated in Pointless and it can be confusing telling which font you want to remove or look at. The font number is automatically updated with every font you convert, but sometimes you may want to reset this to another number. You might already have a group of fonts with a certain font number that you wish to skip. Or you might have just converted a whole batch of files only to find that you didn't like any of them. You can check in the PREFERENCES for more information on adjusting this. 3. EDITING FONTS This lets you edit the FOND resource for the selected font. You can change the Name, Font Number, and Style characteristics of the font. This also supports batch operation letting you easily clean up the new fonts you've converted. FONT SUITCASES On the Macintosh, more than one font is often stored into the same file (also known as a font suitcase). There are some benefits to this on the Mac, mostly for the sake of neatness. It also saves a few kilobytes per font. But there's another side to the font suitcase, a dark side, especially on the GS. To start with, there is no GS program that will manipulate the contents of a font suitcase since it uses an incompatible format for the resource fork. That means that once the fonts are in there, they're in there for good. That's annoying in itself because you might not want every font in a particular suitcase and it's just sitting around wasting your disk space. But what happens when you want to add one of the files in the font suitcase? Well, you must add all of them since they are all stuck in that file like some kind of stuck together thing that you can't take apart. And you have to remove those fonts, every last one, that you don't want. Oh the humanity! Anyway, if you try to edit a font suitcase, Fontpimp will ask you if you'd like to split the file into individual font files (like God intended). This allows you to edit all of their fonty information, as well as to have better control over your fonts. You can achieve some of the same functionality on the GS with what the computer gurus sometimes call a "subdirectory" or perhaps a "folder", and place all of the fonts you want to group together in there. Of course, once they're in there you'll have to pretend you can't access them individually and promise yourself that you'll load all the files in the "suitcase" folder even though you only want one. THE EDIT DIALOG Back in the dark ages, before Fontpimp, there was no way to change anything about a font once you'd gotten ahold of it. Sure, you could rename the file, or make it invisible, but that doesn't really count. Fortunately for you, the Edit dialog gives you the following options: NAME This is the font's name as displayed in Pointless. Each font should have a separate name. The exception to this is that all members of the same font family which have style codes that can be assigned to them (like Bold or Italic) should share the same font name. NUMBER This is the font number. Each font should have a unique number, as that is how Pointless tells them apart. The exception to this is that all members of the same font family which have style codes that can be assigned to them (like Bold or Italic) should share the same font number. STYLE This lets you set the style code for the font. This is useful when you have the different styles of the same font family. For example, suppose you had the good fortune to come across the Bookman typeface with Bookman Book, Bookman Bold, Bookman Bold-Italic, and Bookman Book Italic. If you have the font information set correctly, Pointless will use the separate font files for each style rather than turning the job over to the untender mercies of the Font Mangle.. er, Manager. Ascent This is the amount the font extends above the base line. If the font has characters that are getting cut off, you might be able to solve the problem by increasing this. If the font has too much white space between lines of text even in single space mode, reducing this may fix it. Descent This is the amount that the font extends below the base line. If the font has characters that get cut off at the bottom you may be able to fix this by increasing this amount (note that it's a negative number, so you'd want to make it more negative). If there is too much room between lines of text even in single space mode, reducing this amount may fix it. SAVE TTF This button saves the font info into a Windows TrueType font file. You can use this to share your current fonts with your new PC friendz. Some font files available on some GS sites apparently were converted (from Postscript probably) by something similar to your garden-variety weedwhacker. That is, the fonts work but they have (at least) corrupted font name tables and this will cause the filename and font name to be incorrect (and often garbled). Needless to say, any font exhibiting this behavior should probably not be shared with your new PC friendz as it is likely to crash their computer. On the plus side, maybe they'll think it's due to a virus and that might create a bit more work for Joe Lunchbox anti-virus programmer, spurring economic growth throughout the region, and preserving the American Way Of Life(tm) as we know it. Non-American users of this program can feel free to substitute other Way Of Life's(tm) for their various countries. Unless they're Commies. Lysergic Software don't have no truck with no damned Commies. CANCEL The first few times using the Font Information dialog you may just want to practice making changes. This button abandons any of the changes you may have made. SAVE When you're sure that everything is just right (did you remember to assign a font name?), this button will save the changes that you made to the font. 4. PREFERENCES The preferences are saved as FONTPIMP.CFG in *:SYSTEM:PREFERENCES. The current values that you can edit are: FONT NUMBER Fontpimp uses a sequential numbering scheme, starting at $100 (no, not a hundred bucks, the hexadecimal representation of the number 256). While Apple stopped trying to keep track of what number was assigned to which font years ago, Pointless likes to use these to tell what font is which. You don't need to change this, but for fun you can try spelling words, so the next font you convert might be: DEAD, D00D, CAFE, F0AD, CACA, DEAF, you get the idea! Be creative, use your imagination, have FUN! KEEP FONT HISTORY The default setting for this is off (or unchecked). This keeps a text file in the program directory, which details what fonts you have converted and what font number was assigned to them. Not only does this help you resolve possible font conflicts, but if you convert enough fonts it makes for great wallpaper. AUTO-STYLE DETECT The default setting for this is on (or checked). This attempts to determine the correct style code (within the parameters available) for the font. If the Font Family is in the current Font Family database and the Style is supported then it is assigned the same Font Number and the style code is set. Some styles such as Heavy, Black and Light are not supported by Apple's style specifications. These fonts will use the Font Family name followed by the Style and uses a separate Font Number. If you leave this off, the font uses the full font name as described in the TrueType file and each font is assigned a separate Font Number. SAVE FONT FAMILY LIST The Font Family list is normally only saved for the current session, but you can have the program save it so it can be used for multiple sessions. Up to 255 font family names can be stored in this list. This list is saved as FONTPIMP.DBF in the *:SYSTEM:PREFERENCES folder. Holding down the Command and Option keys while clicking on the check box won't change the value but it will delete the current database file and reset the counter to zero. Unlike the other values, they won't be restored if you don't save, so make sure you want to do it before you do.