Virtue

version 2.1, March 21, 1998
Copyright ©1997-1998 Marty P. Pfeiffer at Scooter Graphics. (background info)
Price: Free!

Virtue is my improvement of Apple Computer's "Charcoal" font appearing in Mac OS 8.

About Virtue:

There is a lot of controversy about Charcoal, and honestly, I think that most of it is unjustified. Basically, a lot of people did not want this font to appear in the Mac OS 8. I think that this feeling is based on a "reverse-engineered" font developed by Greg Landweber for his Aaron extension and Kaleidoscope control panel. Greg built his font from looking at various screenshots and did a good job at making a very complete font. However, the spacing information and special characters characters seemed a little off to me. It seems that Apple couldn't decide whether Charcoal should have two pixels between the letters or just one. This leads to a cramped appearance on screen.

So here's what I did: basically, I took his work and tried to space it how I would if I was making Apple's next font. I studied the "Chicago"system font and and used it as a template for my font. After about 2 hours of tinkering, I had a bitmap font that looked really good as a replacement font for Kaleidoscope. About a week later, after tinkering some more, I made even more improvements.

And then I decided to create a regular weight of Virtue to go along with it. I tried to carry the unique features of Virtue into Virtue Light. It's currently just a 12 point bitmap font, but I thought that it might be useful for those of us who have smaller screens or are just tired of looking at bold fonts all day. I'd love to hear any comments you may have about Virtue-Light.

Virtue Patch Info:

I have decided to stop creating patches for the Appearance Extension. Instead, I am distributing the resource you will need to paste into the extension using ResEdit. ResEdit is a free utility from Apple Computer available at <ftp://ftp.info.apple.com//Apple.Support.Area/Apple.Software.Updates/US/Macintosh/Utilities/ResEdit_2.1.3.sea.hqx>(if you don't already have it).

The instructions for patching the Appearance Extension are quite simple.

  1. Make a copy of the Appearance Extension (it's in the Extensions folder of your System folder)
  2. Move the copy to the Extensions (disabled) folder. You can use this copy if anything goes wrong by holding down the space bar on startup and using the Extensions Manager to switch to it.
  3. Double click on the "Virtue.sfn#" file. This will start ResEdit.
  4. Open the Appearance Extension in ResEdit
  5. Copy the sfn# icon from "Virtue.sfn#"
  6. Switch to the "Appearance Extension" window in ResEdit and paste it in. Press the "Yes" button to the "Replace resources with same ID?" dialogue that comes up.
  7. Quit ResEdit

And that's it! To use Virtue, simply restart your computer and then open the Appearance Control Panel. While holding down the "option"key, switch to the desired font.

Freeware Notice:

You don't need to pay a cent for this font. In fact, I will refuse to take any money for it at all. Please, I'm begging you, NO MONEY!!!!! If you want to spend some money, take a look at some of my other fonts previewed here and buy them from my website. I do retain all rights to this font, so don't even think about trying to sell it. I mean really, how tacky could you get.

Distribution Info:

If you would like to include Virtue on a CD or upload it to your favorite ftp site, please send me a note. I'm more than happy to allow Virtue to be distributed through different channels, I just want to be in the loop :-) Please see my End User License Agreement for details about proper use of my fonts.

* Online Registration(Secure | Non-secure)
You can register any Scooter Graphics font, right here, right now!
* Comments?
Send Marty a comment about his fonts.
* Scooter Graphics Font Samples
See samples all the fonts available from Scooter Graphics

Version History