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Read-Me
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Font Gander Pro
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Version: 1.2
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Copyright ゥ1997, Hugh Johnson
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Contact and Feedback:
Licensing:
See the last section of this document.
Home Page:
<http://home.att.net/~BHuey/>
Other Correspondence:
Hugh Johnson
7925 6th St NE
Sping Lake Park, MN 55432
USA
Email: <BHuey@worldnet.att.net>
Voice: +1 612 792-0583
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System Requirements:
Font Gander Pro will operate usefully under version of system software
from 7.0 on up, on any PowerMac or Macintosh of MacII class or higher.
To enjoy its full functionality, you should also have Macintosh Drag
and Drop installed (introduced as an extension in System 7.1, and now
part of the standard MacOS), and Adobe Type Manager, version 3.0 or
higher (freely available at numerous sites, typically bundled with
Adobe's Acrobat Reader). And of course you should have some font files
lying around, uninstalled - the more, the merrier.
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Version History has been moved to a separate document.
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Quick Start has been moved to the application's online Help menu.
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Installation:
You can install Font Gander Pro anywhere on your hard drive. It does
not modify your system in any way and does not need any special rela-
tionship to the System Folder. You should keep it in its own folder,
however, so that it can find its print layouts in the "Gander Plug-ins"
subfolder. You should also keep the "Gander Quill" editor in the Font
Gander Pro folder (just to be neat & tidy).
It is recommended that you make one or more aliases of the Font Gander
Pro application, and place them where they can be easily accessed. If
you're running a recent version of the Mac OS, you ought to place an
alias in your Apple Menu Items folder (inside the System Folder), so
that you can launch the program right from the Apple menu and load
fonts by dragging them straight into one of Font Gander Pro's windows.
If you're running an older version of System 7, without window-based
drag-and-drop capability, it is almost essential for you to place an
alias of Font Gander Pro on your desktop, so that you can drag and
drop font files directly on the Gander icon.
Icon-based drag-and-drop is disabled for programs located on floppy
disks. Sometimes, when you copy an application from a floppy to your
hard drive, the system gets confused, and drag-and-drop remains dis-
abled. If this happens to you (whether the problem appears with Font
Gander Pro or any other drag-happy program), you should "rebuild the
desktop" by holding down command and option at system startup. If you
received Font Gander Pro on a floppy disk in a StuffIt package, unpack
it straight to your hard drive to avoid this problem. Do not unpack it
directly on the floppy disk.
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What It's For:
Font Gander Pro began its life as a solution to a problem that's as old
as System 7 itself. When System 7 first appeared, it delighted everyone
with dozens of new features, among which was the ability to view fonts
by double-clicking on the font files, even fonts that weren't installed
in the OS. However, as the novelty wore off, people became frustrated
with this feature. It seemed more tantalizing than satisfying. System
7 shows you only one measly little window with one line of text (or 3
measly lines, if it's a TrueType font), and there are no options to
increase the point size or to see the entire character set, which is
often exactly what you need to see, to make your double-click worth-
while. People want more. Font Gander Pro offers more.
With Font Gander Pro, you just drag your font files onto the Gander
icon - or, if Gander is already running and if you have Macintosh Drag
and Drop in your system (all recent systems have it), you can drag the
font files into any of Font Gander Pro's windows (except in print mode).
This causes Gander to load the font and spring into the foreground,
instantly giving you numerous viewing options, a hundred times better
than the Finder offers. A further advantage is that Font Gander Pro can
display Type-1 PostScript fonts just as smooth and crisp as TrueTypes
(provided you have Adobe Type Manager installed), and Font Gander Pro
can print beautiful sampler sheets - something no other software can do
without installing the fonts first.
Although the printing functions have grown enormously since the release
of the first Font Gander in September of 1996 (more on printing later),
the program's main interface has remained essentially unchanged. It's a
strange interface that can only be explained in the context of giving
you a quick, easy, and satisfying view of your non-installed fonts. The
main window grows and shrinks, there's a grab-anywhere mover hand in-
stead of a dragable titlebar, the text sometimes explodes to giant size
and slides across your screen-- Well, it's hard to describe. Let's just
take it for a test-drive...
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A Brief Tour of a Strange Interface:
1)Double-click on the Gander icon. You'll see a splash-screen come and
go, and then a simple toolbar and an even simpler main window. When
you try the first button on the toolbar, you'll see that it shrinks
the window into a tiny Gander portrait which can be dragged anywhere
on the screen. Double-click on this portrait, and suddenly the main
window reappears. The second button on the toolbar gives you a small
grabber-hand, with which you can drag the main window anywhere. The
third button on the toolbar gives you a magnifying glass, and when
you click this magnifier and hold the mouse button down on one of
the lines of text, a huge ribbon of text appears, sliding left and
right as you move the mouse.
2)Try the menus. The Windows menu first. You'll see an item called
"Grid View". When you try it, the main window suddenly changes from
lines of text to a square gridwork of characters, all 256 characters
in the current font. Click the magnifier anywhere, and suddenly the
character underneath springs up in huge dimensions (you can make it
even bigger in the preference settings). The key-combination for
that character is shown in the lower left (not guaranteed with all
characters; we've ignored control-key combos, delete and spacebars,
and it hasn't been tested with all keyboard layouts). If you magnify
with your shift key down, you'll see the ASCII number in place of
the keyboard combo. By typing on your keyboard, you'll see the co-
responding characters blinking on the grid. If you hold down your
spacebar or option key, the magnifier temporarily reverts to a
grabber, so you can move the window without switching tools in the
toolbar.
3)Let's skip over to the "Style" menu now. It looks rather ordinary,
you say? Alright, just for kicks, select a huge font size. Suddenly
the main window expands to fill your computer screen. Don't worry -
you can drag it with your grabber tool, and bring every inch of it
into view, one screenful at a time. This is much faster than scroll-
ing. This explains why the main window isn't designed like a conven-
tional scrolling document window; instead, this combines optimal
viewing area with optimal speed and optimal magnification. Now drag
the window upward and toward the left, till you can only see a few
characters in its lower-right corner. Now, change the font size back
to the default, or set it all the way down to 4 points if you like.
What happened? It looks like the window shrank away from the screen.
Come to think of it, it should have shrunken so much, it would be
totally off-screen! But it isn't. Even if the window shrinks down
to postage-stamp size, there's just enough left showing to pull it
back with the grabber hand. This is because the window is "pinned"
to the main screen. You can change this setting in the preferences,
too, if you'd like to keep the window on another monitor, for ex-
ample. In that case, if the window does go far astray, you'll need
to jump back to the Windows menu, where there's an option to "Fetch
Stray Windows". Are things starting to make sense now?
4)Check out the "Font" menu. All your installed fonts are there, of
course, but the first three menu items tell you how to add more -
just drag font files or folders from the Finder into any of Gander's
windows, or onto the application icon (or alias), or use the "Open"
menu. This is where the fun really begins. We'll let you experiment
on your own. But as you do, notice how the font menu sorts new font
names, and selects the newest one you add. By typing the tab key,
you page down through the fonts; shift-tabs page you up. Be aware
that you can't load fonts from your "Fonts" folder, nor any other
fonts which are already opened by the System or another utility. The
Gander is cautious about this, and very safe. Feel free to experiment.
You'll soon find your own particular way of using the program to its
best advantage. Some people can't stand the big window filling their
screen, so they keep it small and always use the magnifier. Some
people keep it so small, they disable the "Auto Minimize/Maximize"
setting. Whatever works for you, it's okay. The baby-simple interface
conceals a lot of versatility.
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Printing:
Well, enough with the fun "Take-a-Gander" interface. If you haven't
yet tried the File menu's "Page Setup / Print", do so now. Suddenly the
program goes into a totally different mode of operation. Drag and drop
is temporarily disabled, as are the menus and the tools, but a list of
available fonts is there, and a preview of the default sampler page
design. If you select any (or all) of the fonts in the list, the "OK"
button turns into a "Print" button, and you'll be printing a sampler
sheet in the design shown. To change the current layout design, use
the popup menu in the lower left. These layouts (all but the "Classic
Gander" layout) are actually stored in small "Plug-in" files, separate
from the Font Gander Pro application file itself. The plug-ins must
reside in the application folder, in a sub-folder called "Gander Plug-
ins". Font Gander Pro won't find plug-in files stored anywhere else.
Admittedly, this is a somewhat awkward file arrangement, since it more
or less prevents you from keeping the application on the desktop, but
it allows you to add more layouts as the need arises. As many as 63 can
be added at any one time. You can design your own layouts with the
Gander Quill layout editor, or you can swap them with friends, trade
them on the internet, etc. There are no distribution restrictions. We
would appreciate it if you would email your layouts to the author
<BHuey@worldnet.att.net> for posting on the Font Gander Pro website
<http://home.att.net/~BHuey/>.
The interface of the Gander Quill editor should be very familiar to
anyone who has ever used a typical draw program. However, we won't go
into it here, since it has its own "Read Me", tutorial, and example
files. It's more complicated than Font Gander Pro. But what isn't?
Programmers can create layouts with far fancier features. A C language
interface to Font Gander Pro's internal print engine is freely avail-
able upon request ($5 s&h if you need a floppy disk).
Oh, we almost forgot to mention! - you can print fonts without loading
them on Font Gander Pro's menu first (which can be a slow process with
huge numbers of fonts). Simply hold down the option key during drag-and-
drop operations, or use the "Print" button in the "Open" dialog box.
The fonts will go straight to the printer, and they'll print in what-
ever layout you selected beforehand.
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Gotchas:
・ Some PostScript printers require you to enable "Color/Grayscale", or
they will not print white letters on black backgrounds. You must make
sure Color/Grayscale is checked in the options of the print job dialog
box (the dialog that belongs to the LaserWriter driver itself). This
problem will only occur the first time you use a particular layout.
After that, the setting is remembered, and is saved into the plug-in
file in question.
・ A font "suitcase" file is not the same as a folder. Although the
Finder allows you to open it like a folder, and you can see things
that look like individual files inside, it is NOT a folder, and
those are NOT independent font files until you've moved them out
into genuine folders. This is an important distinction, because Font
Gander Pro only opens true files - i.e., the suitcases themselves, or
the inner font files AFTER they've resided in a normal folder. In
short, you cannot grab an individual font from a suitcase and drag
it directly into a Gander window. It won't work (although it won't
hurt if you try).
・ Some previous versions of Font Gander would allow you to load the same
font several times from several different files. In other words, if you
opened a 10-point bitmap of Garamond, for instance, and then decided
it looked too "jaggly", you could simply load a Garamond TrueType to
sharpen the image. This is no longer possible. In order to load many
hundreds of fonts without crashing, Gander's internal file-handling
routines have gone from a simple "open-darn-near-anything" approach
to a far more complicated scheme. As a result, this version may not
behave as nicely for people with poorly organized font collections.
Those users are advised to organize their fonts, and keep all font
faces of the same family grouped within the same suitcase file, and
to prefer suitcase files over other font types. This is a good policy
to follow whether you're using Font Gander Pro or not.
・ If you have Adobe Type Manager (ATM), and you want to view or print
Type-1 PostScript fonts at large sizes without 'jaggles', you must
keep the high-resolution vector files in the same folder where the
screen fonts reside. This is the typical way in which all Type-1 font
utilities operate. When Gander opens a PostScript screen font, it
tells ATM where to look for the vector version, but it has no way of
"knowing" where the vectors are beyond "assuming" that they're in the
same folder with the screen font.
・ Frequent changes of font faces and sizes - especially many variations
on a single printed page - can sometimes place extra memory demands
on ATM. Recent versions of ATM will alert you if there's a problem,
but if you have an older version it may require some guess-work. You
can increase ATM's memory by opening its control panel and changing
the value in the "cache" field.
・ In theory, Font Gander Pro can print an entire CD-ROM full of fonts
in one pass. In practice, it's always a good idea to limit yourself
to a few folders full of fonts at a time. Most font CD's have their
fonts organized alphabetically in subfolders, which makes this very
convenient. If you absolutely MUST print a whole CD all at once, you
should first increase Font Gander Pro's memory allocation. Quit the
program (if it's running), click once on the Gander icon to select
it, and choose "Get Info" from the Finder's File menu. In the file's
Info window, double or triple the numbers in the lower right, per-
taining to memory usage.
・ As mentioned, some fonts will not load or print. Gander will refuse
to open any file that's already opened by the System or any other
utility. It will refuse to open any font whose ID number or name
conflicts with another font that's already opened or installed.
・ Plug-ins have internal names - distinct from their file names - which
must not conflict. If two or more layouts have the same internal name,
Font Gander Pro will randomly open only one of them, and will ignore
the other. For this reason, we suggest you do not distribute finished
plug-ins, but instead distribute editable Gander Quill documents, so
that other people can build their own plug-ins using whatever name
they choose. This also lets them touch-up and customize your work in
other ways.
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The Fine Print:
Font Gander Pro carries no warranties, expressed or implied. To the best
of our knowledge, it contains no "bugs" that could bomb your computer
or cause damage to your files, but we cannot guarantee that such a
thing will never happen in the extremely complex environment of a
modern computer operating system.
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Even Finer Print:
- "Macintosh" and "MacOS" are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
- "PostScript", "Acrobat", and "Adobe Type Manager" are trademarks of
Adobe Systems, Inc.
- The gander's name is "Reginald", but only his mother calls him that.
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Bottom Line:
Font Gander Pro is SHAREWARE. A single-user license is $20 (US). Site
licenses, which allow for an unlimited number of copies to be used at a
given location, are available for $350. Worldwide licenses, covering all
operations within a corporation, are $1700.
Licensed users of the original Font Gander (i.e., anyone who registered
the shareware version 1.0.x prior to April 4th, 1997), can upgrade to
Font Gander Pro for only $7. Contact the author directly for other (free)
upgrade options you may have missed. PLEASE NOTE: If you do not fall
into this customer category, the terms of licensing which accompanied
the original Font Gander 1.0 are no longer valid. THE ORIGINAL FONT
GANDER IS NO LONGER FOR SALE.
Licensed users of the Rascal edition of Font Gander may upgrade for free
by contacting the author directly.
In this package, there should be a program called "Register", which pro-
vides an easy way to make payment in numerous forms. Simply launch the
Register program, enter your name, your email address (if you have one),
and/or your postal address. We must be able to mail you back one way or
the other, to send an unlocking code which uncripples the program (i.e.,
removes the watermark and other annoyances). Your unlocking code will
work in any and all future versions of Font Gander Pro up to but not
including version 2.0.
Once you've entered your contact info, you must enter the number of units
you would like to license. Select your method of payment from the pop-up
menu in the lower left of the window, and enter any additional info that
is required (credit card number, etc). Save, Copy, or Print the data from
the Register program and send the data and payment to Kagi. (Addresses
for submitting payment via ground mail, email, or fax are given below.)
Kagi handles my payment processing.
If paying with Credit Card or First Virtual, you can email or fax
the data to Kagi. You can either Copy the data from Register and paste
into the body of an email message or you can Save the data to a file and
attach that file to an email message (mailto: shareware@kagi.com). There
is no need to compress the data file, it's already pretty small. If you
have a fax modem, just Print the data to the Kagi fax number (+1 510 652-
6589).
If paying with Cash or USD Check you should print the data using the
Register application and send it to the postal address below. You can pay
with a wide variety of cash from different countries, but at present, if
you pay with a check, it must be a check drawn in US Dollars. Kagi cannot
accept checks in other currencies; the conversion rate for non-USD checks
is around USD 15 per check and that is just not practical.
If you have a purchasing department, you can enter all the data
into the Register program and then select Invoice as your payment method.
Print 3 copies of the form and send it to your accounts payable people.
You may want to highlight the line that mentions that they must include
a copy of the form with their payment. Kagi cannot invoice your company;
you need to act on our behalf, generate the invoice, and handle all the
paperwork on your end.
To send payment via ground mail:
Kagi Shareware
1442-A Walnut Street #392-2Y4
Berkeley, California, 94709-1405
USA
To send payment electronically:
Email: shareware@kagi.com
FAX: +1 510 652-6589
- Payments sent via email will be processed within 3 to 6 days. You will
receive an email acknowledgement when it is processed.
- Payments sent via fax take up to 10 days and if you provide a correct
internet email address you will receive an email acknowledgement.
- Payments sent via postal mail take time to reach Kagi and then up to 10
days for processing. Again, if you include a correct email address, you
will hear from Kagi when the form is processed.
Please do not fax or email payment forms that indicate Cash, Check or
Invoice as the payment method. As far as we know, there is still no
technology to transfer physical objects via fax or email and without the
payment, the form cannot be processed.
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Thank you!