Amiga Format CD 1/amigaformatcd01.iso/commercial/pfm2/readme

Text File | 1996-04-30 | 19.7 KB | 452 lines

 ---

 <Space> = Next Page
 <Return> = Next Line
 <q> = Quit

 This text can be printed with a word processor, or by typing the
 following command in a Shell window:

    Copy PFM2:ReadMe PRT:

 ---

 Cloanto Personal Fonts Maker 2

 The Personal Fonts Maker 2 has been acclaimed as "the best bitmapped
 fonts editor for the Amiga" by enthusiasts and professionals from all
 over the world. It is the leading tool for handling fonts in up to 256
 colours (no size limit, RTG compatible). Among others, special functions
 for anti-aliasing (even using an Amiga vector font as a point of
 departure) and right-to-left fonts are provided. This makes it an ideal
 companion to video applications, and a must in the titling environment.

 This disk contains a complimentary release of Personal Fonts Maker
 version 2.0 for the readers of Amiga Shopper. The main program is
 identical to the latest commercial version. Some files (data files,
 support programs, Amiga system resources, etc.) have in part been changed
 to fit on a single disk. Two professional colour fonts from Kara Computer
 Graphics are also included.

 At the same time as this cover disk appears, a new package is being
 released by Cloanto: The Kara Collection CD-ROM. A description of the
 CD-ROM is enclosed, while a reader offer appears on the same issue of
 Amiga Shopper.

 For more information, please contact Cloanto or the local distributors
 named at the end of this file. To take advantage of product upgrades,
 don't forget to mail the registration card which comes with each original
 product. E-mail registration forms are also enclosed on the disks.


 Short Instructions

 The Personal Fonts Maker 2 may be launched with a double-click on the
 PFM2 Workbench icon, on any Amiga with 1 Mbyte of RAM (ideally, Chip
 RAM). Colour fonts are supported from version 2 (or higher) of the Amiga
 operating system.

 Amiga fonts are normally accessed through the "FONTS:" assigned path. The
 PFM2 disk includes the "AssignFonts" utility to reassign "FONTS:". During
 your work with the cover disk this utility can be used to reassign the
 path from "SYS:Fonts" to "PFM2:Fonts" and vice versa.

 It is very easy to explore the Personal Fonts Maker 2 by choosing from
 the variety of menus and gadgets. It is recommended to make a backup copy
 of the disk before experimenting with functions which write data.

 The Personal Fonts Maker 2 is a result of Personal Paint development
 applied to fonts. This means that many users of Personal Paint will
 immediately be familiar with the toolbar and the main functions of PFM2.

 Amiga fonts are loaded and saved with the Load Amiga Font and Save Amiga
 Font commands in the Project Menu. The format of the font (size, number
 of colours) can be changed from the Font Format requester, which can be
 displayed from the Settings menu. The colour palette can be edited by
 pressing <p>, which is equivalent to selecting Edit in the Colour/Palette
 menu.

 Most gadgets on the toolbar react differently depending on whether they
 are selected with the left or with the right mouse button (which in most
 cases activates the tool settings requester). The drawing tools can be
 selected in the upper or lower part to activate different effects (e.g.
 rectangular outlines or full boxes).

 There are a few special gadgets which are not found in painting programs.
 The top five gadgets are:

 - Font
 - Character
 - X Size
 - Space
 - Kerning

 All five gadgets can be selected with the left mouse button to increase
 the value, and with the right button to decrease it.

 The Font gadget allows to select the font environment. PFM2 has two
 working environments which can contain independent fonts. Another use of
 the two environments could be to store a font in one environment, and use
 the other as a storage area for clips. It is possible to load an image
 and store it in a character of the font.

 The Character gadget allows the user to move forward and backward in the
 font. Characters can also be selected by clicking on the "??" gadget,
 which activates the quick character selection window. Amiga fonts can
 store up to 256 characters. The character code 256 is reserved for the
 undefined character, as specified by the Amiga font format.

 The horizontal size of the character can be controlled by the X Size
 value. The minimum size is 1 (one column of dots), while the grid can be
 as large as defined by the Font Format settings. This parameter does not
 need to include additional spaces at the left or right of the character.
 The Space and Kerning parameters should be used for this purpose. To
 disable unused characters, use the On/Off gadget.

 The Space parameter defines the logical horizontal size of the character,
 starting from the beginning of the bitmap. The value associated with this
 parameter is usually slightly higher than the X Size parameter. This
 parameter affects the placement of the following character in the text.

 The Kerning parameter (also called "Left Offset") determines the starting
 position of the character when it is printed. The parameter specifies an
 offset from the position immediately following the last character which
 was printed or displayed. By default this value is left to 0. Negative
 values are sometimes used, especially in handwriting effects.

 The Space and Kerning parameters do not affect the bitmap of the
 character. Instead, they are used to control the horizontal spacing
 between the characters when several characters are grouped together to
 print, display or output text.

 The two gadgets which appear under the Brush tool are the Memory tool and
 the Chop tool. Memory can be selected with the left button to copy the
 current character (and spacing information) to an internal buffer, and
 with the right button to paste it. Chop narrows the character grid,
 cutting off empty columns. Chop can be selected with the right mouse
 button to center the character without removing empty columns. The other
 gadgets are used to move and flip the character.

 The little arrows between the toolbar and the character editing box
 indicate up to four reference points, which are useful when designing new
 fonts. These can be set by selecting a position with the left mouse
 button in the reference point area and by pressing a function key between
 <F1> and <F4>.

 The box to the left of the Grid Colour tool indicates whether the font
 has a remappable foreground colour. Some applications can change this
 colour to change the font's appearance in a particular environment. To
 define the colour, just click on the box and then pick a colour from the
 palette. To disable this feature, click on the box and then click
 anywhere outside the palette.

 The Reverse Direction and Flip Font items in the Attributes Menu are
 useful when working with right-to-left fonts (also used for video titling
 effects). The first option only changes the spacing and kerning
 information, while the second one flips the character images.


 Tutorial 1: How to Create a Colour Font in Ten Minutes

 The "Fonts" drawer on the cover disk includes a colour font named
 "TenMinutes", which you can create in a few minutes by following these
 instructions.

 Select Open Amiga Font from the Project menu. From the list of fonts
 which are included with the Amiga, choose CGTimes. This is a vector font
 which can easily be scaled to any size. Type "55s" in the string gadget
 to the right of the gadget with the font name. The "s" means that the
 system should scale the font to a size of 55, rather than picking the
 font with the closest size (from the pre-scaled bitmaps which are
 available). Press the "Bold A" gadget to make the font bold. If you do
 not have this font, pick any black and white font with a comparable size.
 Bold fonts are preferred in this example, because the characters will be
 filled.

 Select Font Format from the Settings requester. Move the Colours slider
 to 8. The font now has 8 colours. Select Colour/Palette/Load and load the
 "TenMinutes.col" palette which is included on the cover disk.

 Try to set Settings/Grid/Dots to see if you prefer to work with this
 option, which affects how the characters are displayed in the editing
 box.

 On the toolbar, click on the Fill tool with the right mouse button. This
 will display the Fill Area Parameters requester. Make sure that the Fill
 Type cycle gadget indicates "Gradient". Click on the gadget with the
 circle until it shows four arrows inside the circle (Shape gradient
 type). Click on the other gadget (to its left) so that it shows an arrow
 with four boxes (Manual gradient mode). Without leaving the requester,
 click on the second colour in the toolbar palette area (the pale yellow
 box, to the right of the black box) with the left mouse button. Select
 the last colour (brown) with the right mouse button. Press Proceed.

 Now the fill tool can be applied to the characters of the font. Click
 (with the left mouse button) anywhere on each character. If you select
 the Settings/Dynamic View option you will be able to see how the changes
 affect a sample of text.

 You created a colour font!


 Tutorial 2: How to Create an Anti-Aliased Font

 This example will show how to anti-alias a font designed for rendering of
 black text on white background, where intermediate shades of gray are
 used to create the illusion of a higher resolution. This effect is
 frequently used in video effects, and can be very useful to preserve the
 quality of small text when working with a paint program.

 The program option that will be used in this example is called Colour
 Average Resize. Activate it from the Settings/Stretch menu.

 In general, to create an anti-aliased font you need to load an Amiga
 (possibly vector) font, add intermediate shades of gray or colour to the
 palette and then reduce the font size. The more colours you add, the
 better the result, and the smaller you can make the font with respect to
 the original.

 In this example we will load a font twice the size of the anti-aliased
 font that we want to create. Following the instructions of the previous
 lesson, load CGTimes 50, or any other font having a similar size. This
 font does not need to be bold, as in the previous example.

 From the Font Format requester (Setting menu) set the number of colours
 to 4.

 Now display the Edit Palette requester (by pressing <p>, or from the
 Colours/Palette menu) and arrange the four colours in a way that white
 appears first and black last. The other two colours should be
 intermediate shades of gray. If you did not change the default program
 options, this palette can be created by swapping the first colour with
 the third, and the second with the fourth. To create the intermediate
 grays, click on the first colour (which should be white), then select
 either one of the Spread gadgets (marked with I or II) and click on the
 last colour (which should be black).

 Now you should have light gray characters on a white background. We want
 them to be black on white. In the palette under the toolbar, select the
 black box with the left mouse button to make it the foreground colour.
 Then select the light gray box with the right button to make it the
 background colour. In the Colour menu, select Change Background to
 Foreground. Now the font characters should be black on white.

 Display the Font Format requester again. Whatever values are displayed in
 the Font size gadgets, divide them by 2. For example, if the values are
 44 and 50, replace them with 22 and 25, respectively. Select Proceed.

 Before converting the font, the program will display a requester
 indicating the new size. Leave the checkmark on Stretch and select
 Proceed.

 As you can see, you created an anti-aliased font!


 Colour fonts and Personal Paint

 If you have Personal Paint at hand, you can easily test your own colour
 fonts, as well as the two Kara fonts which are on the disk. The
 KaraChiselSerif and KaraGranite fonts include capital letters, digits and
 punctuation signs.

 In Personal Paint, select the Text tool on the toolbar (the "a"-gadget)
 with the right mouse button. In the font requester, type "PFM2:Fonts" in
 the Path string gadget. You should see a new list of fonts which includes
 the fonts on the cover disk. Just click on the font names for a preview.
 To use the fonts with the best colours, remember to select the
 "Colour/Palette/From Font" menu item.


 The "Personal" Font

 Personal Paint and the Personal Fonts Maker Colour Extensions normally
 share the same Personal font for their user interface. The font itself
 has been upgraded a few times. On a system where different versions of
 these programs are installed, it may happen that one of the programs
 expects an older version of the font to be available. While minor changes
 are usually backwards compatible, if any characters appear to be
 incorrectly displayed it is sufficient to remove the font from the system
 "FONTS:" directory. All versions of Personal Paint and PFM2 also search
 for the font in their local directories, where the font is copied during
 automatic installation.

 If you are still using Topaz 8 for the Workbench icon texts, you may want
 to try Personal 8 as a more readable replacement.



 New from Cloanto: The Kara Collection CD-ROM
 The Complete Collection

 A professional and unique collection of fonts, backgrounds and tools for
 special effects in pictures, animations, titling and presentations. All
 items for solo or combined use.

 The CD-ROM contains 80 ColourFonts (including effects like brick, glass,
 chrome, chisel, etc.), 5 AnimFonts (handwriting, rotating characters,
 static wipes, sparkles, etc.), hundreds of alternate colour palettes,
 Starfields (moving stars seen from different perspectives), textures and
 backgrounds (granite, marble, sand-stone, wood, etc.), the Personal Fonts
 Maker software and an anim-brush upgrade for Personal Paint.


 New from Cloanto: Personal Suite CD-ROM
 Quality Amiga CD-ROM

 This CD-ROM includes Personal Paint and Personal Write from Cloanto,
 SBase 4 Personal (from Oxxi), Personal Fonts Maker 1 & 2 (Cloanto), 27
 professional Kara colour fonts (Kara Computer Graphics), Cloanto's
 DirDiff (file synchronization and replication software) and PNG Toolkit,
 plus ½ Gbyte of pictures, animations, stereograms, stereogram animations,
 Amiga fonts, printer downloadable fonts and texts.

 The CD-ROM contains no public domain or shareware software. The
 commercial titles are the latest versions available, with full AmigaGuide
 manuals (English and German, with some titles also in Italian and
 French).

 Famous Amiga artists like Jim Sachs participated with a selection of
 their best Amiga art. Also included, a compilation of animations by Eric
 Schwartz, for the first time in IFF ANIM format.

 The CD-ROM is packaged in an elegant metal box.


 Cloanto Personal Paint

 Personal Paint is a powerful and intuitive paint, image processing,
 animation and 24-bit printing package. Employ stunning effects like
 emboss, water-colours, transparencies and stereograms (as in "Magic
 Eye"), while virtual memory frees precious Chip RAM by using other
 storage resources! Plus: support of RTG graphics cards, different file
 formats (IFF, PNG, PCX, encrypted, C source code, DataTypes, etc.), nine
 brushes or anim-brushes, two independent working environments,
 multi-level Undo/Redo, animation storyboard, Bézier curves, autoscroll
 painting, professional colour reduction, superior text editor, colour
 fonts, PostScript output, screen grabber...



 Distributors

 For more information please contact the local distributors listed here.

 Great Britain:
 Digita International Limited           Tel [phone]
 Black Horse House                      Fax [phone]
 GB - Exmouth  EX8 1JL                  E-mail [e-mail]

 Meridian Software Distribution Ltd.    Tel [phone]
 East House                             Fax [phone]
 East Road Industrial Estate
 GB - London SW19 1AH

 North America:
 Software Hut, Inc.                     Tel [phone]
 Folcroft East Business Park            Fax [phone]
 313 Henderson Drive
 USA - Sharon Hill, PA 19079

 SoftWood, Inc.                         Tel [phone]
 7776 Pointe Parkway West               Fax [phone]
 Suite 270                              E-mail [e-mail]
 USA - Phoenix, AZ 85044

 Kara Computer Graphics                 Tel [phone]
 2554 Lincoln Boulevard                 E-mail [e-mail]
 Suite 1010
 USA - Marina del Rey, CA 90291

 German Area:
 Casablanca Multimedia GmbH             Tel [phone]
 Wiemelhauser Straße 247 a              Fax [phone]
 D - 44799 Bochum

 Belgium:
 Amiga City - G.E.S.                    Tel [phone]
 Avenue du Price Heritier, 176          Fax [phone]
 B - 1200 Bruxelles

 The Netherlands:
 Barlage Computer Hardware              Tel [phone]
 Kaalheidersteenweg 262                 Fax [phone]
 NL - 6467 AH Kerkrade

 Danemark:
 Epic Data                              Tel [phone]
 Jernbanevej 11                         Fax [phone]
 DK - 4500 Nykøbing Sjælland

 Sweden:
 ProComp                                Tel [phone]
 Box 46                                 Fax [phone]
 S - 340 36 Moheda                      Bbs [phone]

 Finland:
 Lincware Computers Ltd                 Tel [phone]
 Lovkullankuja 3                        Fax [phone]
 FIN - 10300 Karjaa

 France:
 Cuda Informatique sarl                 Tel [phone]
 31, rue de Trevise                     Fax [phone]
 F - 75009 Paris

 Vitepro                                Tel [phone]
 42, rue Raymond Marcheron              Fax [phone]
 F - 92170 Vanves

 Phoenix-DP                             Tel [phone]
 BP 801                                 Fax [phone]
 F - 64008 Pau Cedex

 Quartz Informatique                    Tel [phone]
 2 bis, avenue de Brogny                Fax [phone]
 F - 74000 Annecy

 Greece:
 Multi-RAK                              Tel [phone]
 Karnassiotis & Radouniklis GBR         Fax [phone]
 Prinz-Regent-Straße 70
 D - 44795 Bochum

 Australia and New Zealand:
 Amadeus Computers Pty Ltd              Tel [phone]
 Suite 1, 534 Old Northern Road         Fax [phone]
 Round Corner NSW 2158
 Australia

 Italy:
 Db-Line srl                            Tel [phone]
 Viale Rimembranze 26/C                 Fax [phone]
 I - 21024 Biandronno  VA               Bbs [phone]
                                        E-mail [e-mail]

 Italy (OEM):
 CTO spa                                Tel [phone]
 Via Piemonte 7/f                       Fax [phone]
 I - 40069 Zola Predosa  BO



 Cloanto

 Cloanto Italia srl                     Tel [phone]
 PO Box 118                             Fax [phone]
 33100 Udine                            Bbs [phone]
 Italy                                  E-mail [e-mail]



 Personal Fonts Maker 2 is Copyright © 1990-1994 Cloanto Italia srl. All
 rights reserved. Parts are licensed or used with permission from third
 parties. No part of this disk may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or
 translated into any language or computer language, in any form or by any
 means, magnetic, optical, electronic, or otherwise without the prior
 written permission of Cloanto. Cloanto and the Cloanto logo are
 registered trademarks, and Personal Paint is a trademark of Cloanto.
 Amiga is a registered trademark of ESCOM AG. All other trademarks,
 property of their respective owners, are acknowledged. Please refer to
 the user guides of the products mentioned here for additional
 information.