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PC-Write Font Selector Guide by Elizabeth Houser and David Locke November 1987 PC-Write Font Selector, Version 1.0 Printed and published in U.S.A. Copyright 1987 by Quicksoft. All rights reserved. Quicksoft 219 First N. #224 Seattle, WA 98109 (206) 282-0452 Table of Contents Installing the Font Selector 6 Running the Font Selector 7 Understanding the Font Selector's Main Screen 9 Assigning Soft Fonts to Font Letters 10 Moving Fonts from One Font Line to Another 12 Deleting and Undeleting Fonts 12 Moving Between Font Lines 13 Editing Font File Names 13 Changing the Name of the Print Control File 14 Saving the Print Control File 15 Exiting the Font Selector 15 Exiting the Font Selector Without Saving Your Changes 15 Using the Files Produced by the Font Selector 16 A Sample Session 17 Appendix A: Creating a Print Control File 20 Appendix B: The Font Selector Menu Options 22 Appendix C: Available Soft Fonts 24 Appendix D: Glossary 25 LaserJet is a trademark of the Hewlett-Packard Corporation. What's a Font? The term font can mean many different things. In the typesetting world, a font is a complete set of letters, numbers, symbols, and punctuation marks at a particular size in a specific typeface. (A typeface is a particular type design, such as Times Roman or Helvetica.) In the world of printers, the definition varies depending on the type of printer. Non-laser printers (dot matrix, daisy wheel, and ink-jet) usually support only one or two typefaces with enhancements. PC-Write calls each enhancement a font. For example, a printer may have one typeface with enhancements such as compressed, double wide, draft quality 10 characters per inch (cpi), draft quality 12 cpi, letter quality 10 cpi, letter quality 12 cpi, boldface, italics, superscript, subscript, underlining, and proportional spacing. PC-Write treats each of these as a separate font. In the laser printer world, there are two basic kinds of fonts: bit- mapped and outline fonts. Some laser printers, like the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet, support bit-mapped fonts; some support outline fonts. In a bit-mapped font, each character is made up of a number of dots; to the computer or printer, each of these dots is represented by a bit. In an outline font, each character is stored as an outline or a geometric description. This means that you can produce different sizes and styles of characters from the same outline. Outline fonts must be converted to bit-mapped fonts at some point. Laser printers that support bit-mapped fonts, such as the LaserJet, take the definition of a font one step further. To this kind of laser printer, a font encompasses: o typeface -- such as Times Roman or Helvetica o point size -- maximum height of a character o spacing -- fixed or proportional o pitch -- number of characters per inch, if fixed spacing o width table -- width of each character, if proportional spacing o stroke weight -- regular, medium, or bold o style -- upright or italics o symbol set -- characters (symbols) available o orientation -- portrait or landscape An example of a font for a laser printer is: Letter Gothic, bold, upright, 12 point, fixed spacing of 12 characters per inch, Roman-8 symbol set, portrait orientation. If you need some further explanation of some of the terms used in this Guide, there is a glossary of terms in Appendix D. How Does PC-Write Treat Fonts? When you edit a file with PC-Write, you use font letters to select the fonts. The available font letters are B, C, D, E, F, H, I, J, L, M, O, P, Q, R, S, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z. You select them by pressing the Alt key and one of the font letters, or by using the <Alt-G>.R command with a letter. See the PC-Write User's Guide for more information on these methods. 2 PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE PC-Write defines the meaning of each font letter for a particular printer through a print control file. This file is created by the WORKDISK program when you install PC-Write. WORKDISK actually runs a program called MENULAZ to create the print control file, which it calls by default PR.DEF. You can run MENULAZ to create a print control file; the instructions are included in Appendix A of this Guide. The print control file contains commands called font control lines. Each font control line is associated with a font letter and contains codes to activate that font on the printer. If one or more of the fonts have proportional spacing, the print control file contains width tables for those fonts. A width table tells PC-Write the width of each character in the proportional font so it can justify, center, and flush-right text. When you print a file, the PC-Write print program processes it, interpreting the font and dot commands and sending the output to the printer. If the file contains a font command, the print program retrieves the codes for that font from the appropriate font control line in the print control file. It places the codes in the text file as it processes it. PC-Write then sends the processed file to the printer. Here's a diagram that illustrates what happens when you print with PC-Write: retrieving the codes for the placing which is looks at fonts from them into sent to +---------+ +----------+ +---------+ +-----------+ +--------+ | the | | the | | the | | the | | | | PC-Write| | PC-Write | | print | | processed | | the | | Print |--->| text file|--->| control |--->| text file |--->| printer| | Program | | with font| | file | | with | | | | | | commands | | (PR.DEF)| | font codes| | | +---------+ +----------+ +---------+ +-----------+ +--------+ What is the PC-Write Font Selector? The font selector is a program that lets you customize a PC-Write print control file for Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers that use downloadable soft fonts. It can also be used for other laser printers that emulate the LaserJet. These printers support three different types of fonts: o Resident fonts that come already loaded in the printer's memory. o Cartridge fonts that come from cartridges inserted into the printer. o Soft fonts. These fonts are copied from a diskette into the printer's memory. This is called downloading. Soft fonts are available on diskette from Hewlett-Packard and other vendors. See Appendix C for more information about available soft fonts. Each soft font diskette contains a number of font files; each font file contains information about one specific soft font and the codes to be downloaded to the printer for that font. You can use the MENULAZ program to create print control files for the resident fonts and for all of the Hewlett-Packard cartridges. MENULAZ can also create print control files for the most commonly used Hewlett- PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE 3 Packard Times Roman and Helvetica soft fonts. If you choose one of these print control files, you can use the HPDOWN.BAT program that comes on the PC-Write utility disk to download the soft fonts to the printer, or you can modify it with the font selector. The font selector program can create print control files for any other soft fonts you want to use. Each time you create a print control file with the font selector, it also creates a download batch file that copies (downloads) the soft fonts into the printer's memory. You run this batch file each time you turn on your printer. Why Use the Font Selector? Okay, when would you use the font selector? Let's look at a short example of when it would be appropriate to use this program. Jean owns a company that creates documentation for small businesses. She has a LaserJet Plus, several cartridges, and some soft fonts, including Times Roman. On her latest project, the client asks her to use Times Roman 10 point font for the body text, ITC Garamond 18 and 24 point for headings, and Broadway 30 point for the front cover. She purchases the ITC Garamond and Broadway soft fonts, then uses the PC-Write font selector to create a print control file specifically for her current task. She assigns Times Roman 10 point to the F font, Garamond 18 point to the P font, Garamond 24 point to the Q font, and Broadway 30 point to the B font. The font selector creates a download file for these fonts, so she downloads the fonts to the printer, and she's ready to print the document. How Does the Font Selector Work? The font selector program has a built-in default print control file for the basic Hewlett-Packard LaserJet with no cartridges. You can start with this file to build your customized print control file, or you can start with an existing print control file. If you need help creating a print control file, read Appendix A in this Guide. Whatever print control file you use as the basis of your customization, many font letters will already be in use. When you run the font selector, the screen shows you which font letters are still available. You can assign fonts to available font letters or to ones that already have fonts associated with them. You assign a soft font to a font letter by typing the name of the appropriate font file on a font line. If the font line already has a font on it, that font will be replaced. You can also delete existing fonts and move fonts from one font letter to another. The program reads the font file, retrieves a description of the font, and places it on the font line. When you exit the program, the codes and width tables (if any) are written to the appropriate font control lines in the print control file. In addition, the program creates a batch file to load the soft fonts into the printer's memory. 4 PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE Here's a diagram that shows how the various files and programs involved in this process interact: font files contain soft fonts and descriptions +------+ download program loads soft fonts | Font | +----------+ into printer | Files|-------------->| Download |--------------------------------+ +--|---+ +->| Program | program reads | +---|------+ | +----------+ control file | | | | +-----------+ text file | | Font | creates | | Text | processed | | Selector |-------->| | File | by PC-Write | | Program | | +-----+-----+ | | | | v v +----------+ | +----------+ +-----+-----+ +---------+ font selector | | Print | | PC-Write | | | reads +->| Control |----->| Print |----->| Printer | descriptions | File | | Program | | | from font files +----------+ +-----------+ +---------+ print program reads print control file PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE 5 Installing the Font Selector The font selector works best on a computer with a hard disk. If you don't have a hard disk and you want to use the font selector, you will have to do quite a bit of disk switching both when you create the print control file and when you download the soft fonts to the printer. Here are instructions for installing the font selector on a floppy disk system and on a hard disk system: To install the font selector on a floppy disk system: 1. Place the font selector diskette in drive A. Place a blank, formatted diskette in drive B. This will be your font diskette. 2. At the A> prompt, type the following line then press the Enter key: COPY FONT.EXE B: The font selector is copied onto the font diskette. 3. Copy the files containing the soft fonts you want to use onto the font diskette. If they don't all fit on on the font diskette, put the remaining soft fonts onto a second diskette. 4. Place the font diskette in the A drive and follow the directions for running the font selector. If you have a second diskette with soft fonts, put it in drive B. The font selector creates a new print control file and a download batch file for loading the chosen soft fonts into your printer's memory. When the program is done, copy the customized print control file onto your PC-Write working diskette. Then, each time you turn on your printer, place the font diskette in drive A (and the second soft font diskette, if any, in drive B) and run the download batch program SOFTDOWN to load the soft fonts into the printer's memory. To install the font selector on a hard disk system: 1. Place the font selector diskette in drive A. At the A> prompt, type the following line then press the Enter key: COPY FONT.EXE C:\subdir where "subdir" is the name of your PC-Write working directory. The font selector is copied into your PC-Write working directory. 2. Copy the files containing the soft fonts you want to use into your PC-Write working directory. 3. Run the font selector. The font selector creates a new print control file and a download batch file for loading the chosen soft fonts into your printer's memory. Now, each time you turn on your printer, run the download batch program SOFTDOWN to load the soft fonts into the printer's memory. 6 PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE Running the Font Selector The font selector lets you easily customize a print control file for soft fonts. It also creates a backup of the original print control file. Finally, it creates a download batch file named SOFTDOWN.BAT that you can run each time you turn on your printer to load the soft fonts. To run the font selector: 1. If you are on a floppy disk system, place your font diskette in drive A (and your second soft font diskette, if any, in drive B). If you are on a hard disk system, change to your PC-Write directory. At the DOS prompt, type the following, then press the Enter key: FONT The first screen of the font selector program appears. This screen tells you about shareware and displays this prompt on the top line: File to load or create (Esc:cancel): "<Default>" 2. The font selector comes with a built-in default print control file. This file accesses the LaserJet resident fonts. If you want to use this default, press the Enter key. If you want to customize your current PR.DEF file or some other print control file, type the name of the file and press the Enter key. 3. If you are customizing an existing print control file, the top line says: Press Esc for no backup, F9 to make backup copy "filename.#ex" where "filename.#ex" is the name of the backup file. The backup file name is the same as the original file name, but it has a different extension. The extension is an "#" plus the first two letters of the original extension. If the original file name has no extension, the backup file name extension is just ".#". Press the Esc key if you don't want to make a backup of the original print control file. Press F9 to make a backup copy. The main screen now appears. The cursor is located on the first available font line, and the name of the print control file appears in the PRDEF FILE: area at the bottom of the screen. If you are customizing the program's built-in print control file, the main screen comes up and the top two lines say: Esc: Exit Program. Enter a new output print control file. Type the name you want to give the file when you save it and press the Enter key, or just press the Enter key to use the name PR.DEF. If the file already exists, the top line says: Press Esc for no backup, F9 to make backup copy "filename.#ex" Press the Esc key if you don't want to back up the original file or F9 to make a backup copy. Now you are ready to assign a soft font to a font letter, move a font to a different letter, delete a font from a font letter, or PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE 7 select an option from the font selector menu. In the rest of this Guide, we'll examine these options. You will also learn to: o understand the font selector's screen o move around the font selector's screen o edit the font selector's screen o use the files produced by the font selector There are two important features of the font selector to keep in mind as you use it. One is that you can exit from the program at any time without saving the changes you have made by pressing the F9 key then exiting with the F2 key. This is covered in more detail later in this Guide. The other is that you can get Help at any time while running the font selector. To get Help while running the font selector: o Press the F1 key. Press the Esc key to return to the program. REMARKS Instead of waiting for the font selector to prompt you for a print control file name, you can type a file name when you enter the program. For instance, if you type: FONT PR.DEF the font selector knows you want to customize PR.DEF, so it doesn't prompt you for that information. The default download batch filename is SOFTDOWN.BAT. If you want to change it, you can name the download batch file when you enter the command to run the program. If you specify the download batch file name, you must give the print control file name first. For example, if you type: FONT FONT.DEF PRDOWN.BAT the font selector uses FONT.DEF as the print control file name and PRDOWN.BAT as the download batch file name. Note: The name you give the download batch file must include .BAT as the extension. The default backup file name is the name of the original file plus an extension composed of a "#" and the first two letters of the original extension, or just "#" if the original file name has no extension. You can change this by specifying a new name when you enter the FONT command. If you change the name of the backup file, you must also specify the names of the print control and download batch files first. For example, if you type: FONT NEW.DEF DOWN1.BAT PR.BAK the font selector uses NEW.DEF as the print control file name, DOWN1.BAT as the download batch file name, and PR.BAK as the backup file name. 8 PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE Understanding the Font Selector's Main Screen The font selector's main screen is composed of the following lines: FONT SELECTOR MENU. This is the first line of the screen. The options on this menu control many important functions of the program. They are described in the body of this Guide, and there is also a summary of the options in Appendix B. PROGRAM MESSAGE LINE. This is the second line of the screen. It tells you about the current operation of the font selector. FONT LINES. These lines define the fonts associated with the PC-Write font letters. Each line contains a font letter, an area for the name of a file that contains a soft font, and an area for the description of the current font. PRINT CONTROL FILE LINE. This is the last line on the screen. It contains an area for the name of the print control file you are saving the changes to. Here's an example of the font selector's main screen: +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | F1:HelpF2:ExitF3:SaveF4:DeleteF5:UndelF6:MoveF7:PRDefF8:DirF9:Unsave | | Enter a file name or select a function key. | | FONT INPUT FONT FILE DESCRIPTION | | B {Available} | | C {Available} | | D {Available} | | E TR060BPN.R8P Times 6.0 point, prop, bold. portrait. | | F 10 CPI 12P COURIER | | H Superscript | | I {Available} | | J {Available} | | L Subscript | | M TR060IPN.R8P Times 6.0 point, prop, ital, portrait. | | O Overstrike | | P {Available} | | Q HV240BPN.R8P Helvetica 24.0 point, prop, bold, portrait.| | R TR080IPN.R8P Times 8.0 point, prop, ital, portrait. | | S Second Strike | | U Underline | | V Lineprinter | | W Double Underline | | X HV080IPN.R8P Helvetica 8.0 point, prop, ital, portrait.| | Y Portrait | | Z Landscape | | PRDEF FILE: PR.DEF | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE 9 Assigning Soft Fonts to Font Letters The main purpose of the font selector is to let you assign soft fonts (downloadable fonts) to PC-Write font letters. You do this by typing the names of soft font files onto font lines on the program's main screen. The main screen of the font selector contains a line for each PC-Write font letter. Each of these lines has three parts: 1. The font letter. 2. A place for the name of the file that contains the soft font. 3. A description of the font. When you run the font selector, the font lines on the screen contain information for the fonts that are currently in the print control file you are customizing. These may be cartridge, resident, or soft fonts. Cartridge and resident font lines will not, of course, contain font file names, but they will contain font descriptions. Font letters that do not have fonts associated with them say {Available} in the description area. You can assign soft fonts to these lines, move existing fonts to other font letters, or delete fonts from font letters. For example, here's the screen for the built-in default print control file: +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |F1:HelpF2:ExitF3:SaveF4:DeleteF5:UndelF6:MoveF7:PRDefF8:DirF9:Unsave | |Enter a file name or select a function key. | |FONT INPUT FONT FILE DESCRIPTION | | B {Available} | | C {Available} | | D {Available} | | E 12 CPI 12P Courier | | F 10 CPI 12P Courier | | H Superscript | | I {Available} | | J {Available} | | L Subscript | | M {Available} | | O Overstrike | | P {Available} | | Q {Available} | | R {Available} | | S Second Strike | | U Underline | | V Lineprinter | | W Double Underline | | X {Available} | | Y Portrait | | Z Landscape | |PRDEF FILE: PR.DEF | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Notice that the E, F, H, L, O, S, U, V, W, Y, and Z fonts are resident fonts. The B, C, D, I, J, M, P, Q, R, and X fonts are available for soft fonts, but you can also replace the resident fonts (or cartridge 10 PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE fonts if there were any) with soft fonts or move them to different font letters. To assign a soft font to a font letter: 1. Move the cursor to the desired font line, and type the name of the file that contains the soft font. You can use the Up and Down Arrow keys to move the cursor. If the font file is on a floppy diskette, include the disk drive specification. If it's on a hard disk, include the disk drive specification and the subdirectory name. For example, if you type B:HV080BPN.R8P, the font selector looks on the B drive for the HV080BPN.R8P font file. If you type C:\FONTS\HV080BPN.R8P, the font selector looks in the FONTS subdirectory of drive C. 2. Press the Enter key, the Tab key, or the Up or Down Arrow keys. The program then searches for the font file. If it finds the file and the file is valid, it retrieves the description of the font from the file and displays it in the description area of the font line. The program also stores the codes for the soft font and the width table information, if any, so that it can copy this information to the print control file when you exit the program. While this is happening, the message "Loading Font" and a count of the number of characters loaded appear on the message line. If the program doesn't find the font file, it displays the message "File not found. Please try again." If the file exists but is not a valid font file, the message line reads "Invalid font file." In either case, the cursor does not move off the line. You can type a file name on a line that already contains a font or on one that says {Available}. If you do it on a line that already contains a font, the original font will be replaced. You can also move fonts from one font line to another and delete fonts. When you type a file name on a font line, you can use any of the font selector editing keys. These are discussed in Editing Font File Names. If you can't remember the name of a font file, you can choose it from a directory listing. To choose a font file from a directory: 1. With the cursor on a font line, press the F8 key. The screen blanks then says: Search name for directory (Esc:cancel): "drive\subdir\*.*" where "drive\subdir\" is the current disk drive specification and subdirectory (if any). Now you can press the Enter key to see a listing of the files on the current disk or subdirectory, or type another disk drive specification and subdirectory, if any, then press the Enter key. If you type a subdirectory name, be sure to end it with a backslash. For instance, if you want to see the files on the disk in the B drive, type B:. To see the files in the FONT2 directory of the C drive, type C:\FONT2\. PC-WRITE FONT SELECTOR GUIDE 11