Simtel MSDOS 1992 June/SIMTEL_0692.cdr/msdos/autocad/hrsh2acd.arc/README

Text File | 1988-07-19 | 8.2 KB | 183 lines

Please read "README.OLD" for details of the original Hershey Font
distribution via usenet from which font data contained in this
distribution are derived.


SOME BACKGROUND NOTES for this distribution:

    First, I realize that I have re-invented a wheel.  After I posted
    an article offering the fonts on comp.sys.ibm.pc, someone pointed
    out to me that the fonts available with AutoCAD Release 9 are
    indeed derived from the Hershey Fonts.  So, if your intention is
    to find NEW fonts for AutoCAD and you have Rel. 9, you should
    forget about this distribution.

    However, if you are interested in obtaining public domain font
    for applications other than AutoCAD, and you want the fonts
    in "source" and open format as those in AutoCAD SHP format, this
    is what you want.  I guess this distribution contains CLONES of
    AutoCAD fonts in Release 9, giving you essentially the same thing
    but ones which are in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.  (I assume AutoDesk does not
    consider their fonts derived from Heshey Font in the public domain.)

    Because of the similarity of fonts in this distribution and those
    that come with AutoCAD Rel. 9, I feel the need to demonstrate the
    entire process from going from the usenet distribution (J. Hurt
    format) to AutoCAD SHP files.  For this reason, this distribution
    contains Font data in the form originally posted on usenet by
    Pete Holzmann (mod.sources, Vol. 4 Issues 42-46, 4-1-86) but
    rearranged in ASCII order for each font style (*.FNT), and
    programs to convert them to *.SHP files.  You can do the conversion
    yourself on your computer.  (So, AutoCAD people, please don't
    bother me.)

    This distribution contains a couple of other programs which may
    be useful if you intend to use the Fonts outside of AutoCAD.
    Included are a simple font compiler, and a font display program
    which uses this compiled font files.  Actually, this part
    was our primary purpose of doing this conversion.  We needed
    public domain stroke (vector) fonts for use in our scientific
    graphing package built into our data acquisition system.
    The use of the AutoCAD SHP format is done mainly for making this
    conversion effort more worthwhile.  Besides, we don't have to
    write any documentation on encoding if we use this format:-).  And
    we can incorporate other fonts for AutoCAD into our package if
    such fonts are available.

    This distribution does not contain 'Plain' or 'Small' version
    of the fonts in the original distribution, nor it contains any
    of the 'oriental' or Japanese kanji and kana fonts.
    If you need to get these in AutoCAD SHP format, you can get the
    original usenet font distribution from the archive and pass them
    through HRSH2ACD program.  It will not be too difficult to
    modify HRSH2ACD.C to convert the Japanese fonts to AutoCAD
    "bigfont" shape definitions.  Again, this will probably duplicate
    what AutoDesk might have done for their Japanese version of AutoCAD.

USE RESTRICTION:
    This distribution of the Hershey Fonts may be used by anyone for
    any purpose, commercial or otherwise, providing that:

        1. The following acknowledgements must be distributed with
            the font data:
            - The Hershey Fonts were originally created by Dr.
                A. V. Hershey while working at the U. S.
                National Bureau of Standards.
            - The format of the Font data in files "*.FNT"
                was originally created by
                    James Hurt
                    Cognition, Inc.
                    900 Technology Park Drive
                    Billerica, MA 01821
                    (mit-eddie!ci-dandelion!hurt)
            - The format conversion from J. Hurt format to
                AutoCAD SHP format was performed originally by
                    Wayne C. Crawford
                    c/o Izumi Ohzawa
                    University of California, Berkeley
                    360 Minor Hall
                    Berkeley, CA 94720
                    ([e-mail])
        2. The font data in this distribution may be converted into
            any other format *EXCEPT* the format distributed by
            the U.S. NTIS (which organization holds the rights
            to the distribution and use of the font data in that
            particular format). Not that anybody would really
            *want* to use their format... each point is described
            in eight bytes as "xxx yyy:", where xxx and yyy are
            the coordinate values as ASCII numbers.

*PLEASE* be reassured: The legal implications of NTIS' attempt to control
a particular form of the Hershey Fonts *are* troubling. HOWEVER: We have
been endlessly and repeatedly assured by NTIS that they do not care what
we do with our version of the font data, they do not want to know about it,
they understand that we are distributing this information all over the world,
etc etc etc... but because it isn't in their *exact* distribution format, they
just don't care!!! So go ahead and use the data with a clear conscience! (If
you feel bad about it, take a smaller deduction for something on your taxes
next week...)

The Hershey Fonts:
    - are a set of more than 2000 glyph (symbol) descriptions in vector
        ( <x,y> point-to-point ) format
    - can be grouped as almost 20 'occidental' (english, greek,
        cyrillic) fonts, 3 or more 'oriental' (Kanji, Hiragana,
        and Katakana) fonts, and a few hundred miscellaneous
        symbols (mathematical, musical, cartographic, etc etc)
    - are suitable for typographic quality output on a vector device
        (such as a plotter) when used at an appropriate scale.
    - were digitized by Dr. A. V. Hershey while working for the U.S.
        Government National Bureau of Standards (NBS).
    - are in the public domain, with a few caveats:
        - They are available from NTIS (National Technical Info.
            Service) in a computer-readable from which is *not*
            in the public domain. This format is described in
            a hardcopy publication "Tables of Coordinates for
            Hershey's Repertory of Occidental Type Fonts and
            Graphic Symbols" available from NTIS for less than
            $20 US (phone number [phone]).
        - NTIS does not care about and doesn't want to know about
            what happens to Hershey Font data that is not
            distributed in their exact format.
        - This distribution is not in the NTIS format, and thus is
            only subject to the simple restriction described
            at the top of this file.

Hard Copy samples of the Hershey Fonts are best obtained by purchasing the
book described above from NTIS. It contains a sample of all of the Occidental
symbols (but none of the Oriental symbols).

This distribution:
    - consists of the following files...
    - C programs here are written with MSC 4.0.  It should be fairly
        easy to make them work with MSC 5.x and Turbo C 1.5.

    *.FNT       - a 'occidental' subset of the Font data using the
            original glyph-numbering but arranged in ASCII order
            for each font styles.

    HERSHEY.DOC - details of the font data format of *.FNT, and other
                  information on the contents of the entire Hershey
            Font.

    HRSH2ACD.C  - a program to convert J. Hurt format font (*.FNT) to
            AutoCAD (*.SHP) format.  The code is complete and
            no other module is necessary for linking.

    FONTX.C     - a simple font compiler which converts ASCII AutoCAD (SHP)
            files to packed binary format (*.XSH) for fast loading
            and drawing.  "*.XSH" files are totally different
            from AutoCAD compiled font files (*.SHX), and support
            minimal subset of SHP definitions.  For example,
            there is no support for ARCs and position push/pop, etc.
            The code is complete, so you may just compile and link
            this file.

    FONTDEMO.C  - a program to display compiled font (*.XSH) on IBM PC
            CGA/EGA.  This program requires simple graphics
            primitives, example of which is in CXYIBMPC.C below
            for CGA/EGA.

    CXYIBMPC.C  - a CGA/EGA drawing C functions for use with FONTDEMO.C.
            This module does screen plotting via BIOS put
            dot functions, hence is extreeeeeemely slooooow.
            Replace drawing primitives with fast ones available
            elsewhere.  I assume you can replace this module with
            MSC 5.x graphics functions to improve the speed a lot.

    *.EXE       -   Executables of the above 3 programs

How to run programs:

    To convert 'ROMANT.FNT' to 'ROMANT.SHP';
        C:\> HRSH2ACD ROMANT.FNT <--

    To compile 'ROMANT.SHP' to 'ROMANT.XSH';
        C:\> FONTX ROMANT.SHP <--

    To display compiled font on IBM PC with CGA/EGA;
        C:\> FONTDEMO ROMANT.XSH <--

Enjoy!