README.FONTS

As I've said, I have been working on an "Apple II like" font for
use with the Second Sight card. After a good bit of tweaking, I'm
happy with what I have now so I'm uploading it to let other SS
developers use it if they wish. An earlier version was included
with my curses package because I wrote the crude font editor using
curses. The font editor is still just as crude, but the font is
much better. In fact, I am now using this new font as my main font
in the ORCA shell.

The use of a new font is somewhat tricky, because if the video mode
is set for any reason, the SS firmware will reset the card so that
it is using the built-in PC style font. The only way to fix this is
for the _SetTextFont call to start working. When I tried to call it,
my system hung, presumably waiting for a handshake. If anyone has
made it work, please let me know. What I have done is write a program
called "cf" for "change font", that uploads the font in the file
"f.font" to the SS card and sets a VGA register that makes the card
start using the new font. This avoids corruption of the uploaded font
when shadowing is enabled and allows me to use the font in the shell
without any trouble by running cf first thing upon entering the shell.

The font editor, "fonter", reads and writes the file f.font. To edit
another font, you have to rename another font file to f.font. There is
another font included in this directory. "thin.font" is an attempt at
another "Apple II style" font that didn't get very far since I didn't
like how it looked.

Lastly, even though the finished font (which comes as f.font) is based
on the Apple II built in font, it doesn't look exactly like the real
Apple II font because there are more pixels on the SS card fonts. It
looks more like the 40 column characters than the 80 column characters,
but it's more "square" looking than either. In any case, *I* like it
better than the PC style font.

-Sheldon