---

FontFiend

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

FontFiend supports a different character window for each character in the font. These windows show the parts that go to make up the letters. These can include bounding boxes, outlines, skeletons, scaffolds and composites.

Outline character windows are opened by double clicking on the relevant character thumbnails on the main table.

Most of the objects you can see in these windows can be dragged around. In all cases you should drag with the SELECT button.

If you are dragging an object you can also use the cursor keys for fine alignment. Cursor keys alone will move 1 design unit in the required direction. SHIFT and the cursor keys will mode 4 units and CTRL with the cursor keys will mode 16 units. When using the cursor keys you will need to keep either the SELECT or the ADJUST button held down on the mouse.

You can also move the entire character using the CURSOR/SHIFT/CTRL combinations, this will move outlines, skeletons, scaffolds and composites. To do this click in the window so that it has input focus and then use the cursor key combination to move the character.

Bounding Boxes

FontFiend will display the character bounding boxes as red rectangles around the character. Bounding boxes cannot be moved or dragged since they are automatically calculated from the composites, skeletons & outlines.

Composites

Composite characters are shown in the outline windows by a grey outline of the composite inclusion with no control points. Composites are moved around by dragging the blue rectangles. These represent the base points of the composites. For example if a composite insert is located at 0,0 then a blue rectangle will be at 0,0.

In the example below the e composite has been dragged to a new location.

When dragging composites it can be difficult to precisely align them. If this is a problem then the composites can be accurately aligned using the Composites List window. This is covered in the next chapter.

Scaffolds

Scaffolds can also be dragged around the local character windows. To drag a scaffold simply hold down the mouse button when the mouse pointer is over the scaffold handle and then drag. The relevant scaffold will then follow the mouse pointer. X scaffolds will only move in the X direction (left & right) and Y scaffolds will only move in in the Y direction (up & down). Scaffolds are selected by holding down on the circle or half circles on the scaffold base lines at the top or the left of the character.

When you click on a scaffold to either select it to to drag it around it will change colour and become red to show it is highlighted.

A highlighted scaffold will also "light-up" any control points that are attached to it. Outline control points that are attached will turn red, as opposed to their normal black colour. Skeleton control points will turn orange as opposed to their normal blue colour.

You can attach further control points to a scaffold when it is highlighted by holding down the CTRL key and dragging over any control points you would like to attach.

Tangent link scaffolds can be moved just by dragging the half circles on the scaffold base lines. Wide scaffolds are a bit different. Dragging the bottom/left circle will move the entire scaffold. Dragging the top/right circle will leave the scaffold in the same place but alter its width.

Outlines

You can drag any characters control point around in the outline window. You can also drag bezier control points around provided that the Display Outline control points option is on in the FontFiend rendering preferences window.

If you need to make substantial changes to a character then you can easily OLE it into Draw using a single click with ADJUST in the outline window. The character will then be exported as a draw file and will appear in a draw window. You can now edit it using any of the Draw editing features. When you have finished editing the character simply save it and FontFiend will re-load it.

Some characters, such as g, may extend below the base line and when exported to Draw for editing may not be totally visible in the window. If this happens then you can drag the drawfile version of the character around so that it is visible in the Draw window. When you save the character from Draw FontFiend will reposition it correctly.

For more details on the editing of paths in Draw see the User Guide supplied with your computer (Page 222 in the RISC OS 3.6 user guide).

When you OLE a character into Draw its outlines will appear as a draw object with no fill colour and a thin black line.

Skeletons

Editing of skeletons can only be done by OLE editing a character into Draw. When a character is exported to Draw the skeletons will be shown as an object with cyan lines. This can be edited in the same way as editing outlines.

The currently selected character

This is always the last outline window you were working on, or the most recently opened window. For example you could have two windows open and select items in each one. Whichever one has a currently selected item (and hence a yellow title bar) will be the one with the currently selected character.

For example if you have the character Special FX window open along with 2 character outline windows and you click on the OK button from this dialogue box then the chosen effect will be applied to the currently selected character.

APDL and Foundation RISCWorld