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FontFiend

The complete manual for them most advanced Font Editor for RISC OS.

The FontFiend character menus are opened by pressing MENU over one of the outline character windows.

This chapter will cover the character menus. Many of the options on this menu are very similar to those on the FontFiend main menu. The difference being that where as the options on the main menu work for the entire font, these options only work for the currently selected character.

Bounding sub menu

This is concerned with the bounding box for this character.

Calculate
Clicking on this will force FontFiend to recalculate the bounding box for this character. The bounding box is always displayed as a red rectangle around the letter.

Display
Moving past this option on the menu will open a window showing the bounding box for the currently selected character.

The low X value in this window is the same as the left side bearing for this character.

Centre to width
Clicking on this option will move the entire character, including local skeletons, scaffolds and composites so that the bounding box for the character is exactly centered inside the characters width. The illustrations below show a before and after sample.

Composites sub menu

This controls composites in the currently selected character.

Delete
Clicking on this option will delete all composite character inclusions from the currently selected character. If you only want to delete one composite then you can do this from either the composite list window or by dragging using CTRL and ADJUST on the main character table (see the relevant chapter).

List
Clicking on this option will open a window listing all composites in the currently selected character.

The example above shows the character Aring. This is a composite character consisting of a composite of A (ASCII 65 at offset 0,0) and a composite of ring (ASCII 16 at offset 167,70).

You can alter the characters used as composites and their X and Y positions. An X/Y position of 0 (zero) means that the composite inclusion will be rendered in the same place as the real character.

Clicking on OK will apply any changes you have made to this window. Clicking Cancel will undo any changes you have made.

Make Real
Clicking on this option in the menu will convert any composite inclusions in the currently selected character to real outlines. Using the example above the two composites (A & ring) would be removed and real outlines of the same characters would be inserted. These outlines will be in exactly the same place as the original composites would have been.

This means that the character will look identical but will no longer be composed of copies of other characters but of real outlines and skeletons. If you do this you may need to re-scaffold this character.

Save
Moving past this option on the menu will open a save dialogue box. From here you can export the outlines of character as a draw file. Even composite characters can be exported as draw files.

Outlines sub menu

This menu is very similar in structure to the outlines sub menu of the FontFiend main menu.

All of the options on this menu work the same way as their counterparts on the main menu, however they will only apply to the currently selected character. See the contents page in the front of this manual for the relevant page numbers for these options.

Scaffolds sub menu

This menu controls scaffolds for the currently selected character.

Automatic
The automatic scaffolder has already been covered in the tutorial and in Chapter 5. The single character auto-scaffolder is very similar to the global automatic scaffolder.

Connect
Clicking on this is will open the local character scaffold connection dialogue box. This is identical to the one covered in the section on the FontFiend main menu.

List
Clicking on this option will open a window listing all of the scaffolds in the currently selected character.

You cannot edit the scaffold positions using this window, it is merely designed to display information on the scaffolds.

The currently selected character is shown, in the example shown on the next page this is H (ASCII 72). The scaffold base character is also shown. This is the character from which any global scaffolds in the selected character will be taken. In this case the scaffold base character is I (ASCII 73). As you can see two of the Y scaffolds are actually from the scaffold base character, they are shown as global on the list.

There are two local X scaffolds, and one local Y scaffold. An illustration of the H character with its scaffolds would probably make this clearer.

As you can see the character H has two local X scaffolds, one for each side of the character. It has one local Y scaffold, for the crossbar and then two global scaffolds, one at the bottom of the character and one at the top. These global scaffolds have come from character I (ASCII 73) since both H and I have exactly the same height.

Manual
Clicking on this option will open then manual scaffold dialogue box. From here you can add new scaffolds to the currently selected character. You can also delete any unwanted scaffolds as well as replace a scaffold with one of a different sort.

This dialogue contains 6 buttons which allow you to select the type of scaffold and three buttons for add, replace and delete.

If you want to add a scaffold then click on the scaffold type you would like and then select the Add button, finally click on the OK button. The relevant scaffold will then appear in the characters outline window. When adding scaffolds FontFiend tries to place them sensibly.

If you want to replace a scaffold then first select the scaffold you want to replace in the outline window (see Chapter 6). Then click on the type of scaffold you would like to replace it with in the manual scaffold dialogue box. Then click on the replace button and then finally on OK.

To delete a scaffold select it in the outline window. Click on the delete button and then on the OK button.

Make Local
Clicking on this option will convert all global scaffolds to local scaffolds. In the scaffold list example earlier this will remove the two global Y scaffolds and replace them with local versions.

Delete all
This option will delete all scaffolds from the character. This can have rather unexpected side effects if the scaffolds in this character form part of the scaffold tree. If this happens then the scaffold tree will become corrupted and FontFiend will ask you to click on the "Delete Tree" option from the scaffolds part of the main menu. You may then have to re-apply scaffolds to the font.

The rest of the menu
Most of the rest of the outline character scaffold menu behaves in exactly the same way as the scaffold sub menu from the FontFiend main menu. Remember of course that anything you select from this menu will only apply to the currently selected character and not to the whole font.

The skeletons sub menu
This again is identical to the skeleton section of the FontFiend main menu except the options apply only to the currently selected character. See the Main menu chapter for more details.

Transform
This is almost identical to the Characters.Transform option from the FontFiend main menu. The only real difference is that the local character version does not have a button which allows you to save the transformation and of course it only changes one character.

Width
Clicking on this opens the local character widths dialogue box. This shows the width of the currently selected character. The width is a number in design units. If your font has a design size of 1000 then a width of 722 (as shown on the previous page) means the character has a width of 722/1000 ems.

You can change the characters width by clicking in the writable icon, changing the value and then clicking on OK. You can also set the width to be the characters bounding box plus or minus the value in the writable icon by clicking on the Set to bbox plus value button.

Zoom sub menu

This menu controls the size of the outline character window.

In
Clicking on this will increase the magnification factor of the outline character window. The window will get larger as will your view of its contents. CTRL W can also be used to zoom in to an outlines window.

Out
Clicking on this will decrease the magnification factor of the outline character window. The window will get smaller as will your view of its contents. CTRL Q can also be used to zoom out an outlines window.

1:1
Clicking on this will restore the window to its default size. This is the size the window was when it was first opened.

Full char
Clicking on this option will open the full (filled) character window for the currently selected character. This is the window that shows how the character will look like when rendered.

Summary
That covers the local character menus. Many of the options on the menus are identical to their counterparts in the main menu. Like any new piece of software it will take a little time to get used to FontFiend. However by making things operate in a consistent manner we hope to make FontFiend as easy as possible to get used to.

The rest of this manual will cover the preferences system, the glossary of terms and appendices.

APDL and Foundation RISCWorld