Amiga Collections: MegaDisc/MegaDisc 02 (1987)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].zip/MegaDisc 02 (1987)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[WB].adf/ARTICLES/Fonts

Text File | 1987-04-21 | 7KB | 138 lines

                    USING  FONTS  ON  THE  AMIGA
                    ============================

    With DeskTop Publishing becoming increasingly fashionable and
usable, many people are becoming interested in Type Faces and Type Sizes,
or Fonts as they are popularly called. A font is a particular type face
of a specific type size, and is often confused with a type face, such as
"Times Roman" or "Helvetica".
I'll discuss some aspects of Fonts here, what's available for your Amiga
and how to use them.

    Anyone looking into the subject for the first time will be
surprised by the its depth and breadth and rich history. The classification
and quantity of fonts are staggering, and some, such as Times, Helvetica
and Bookman, have reached the status of classics of design and most
importantly, readability. The design of any good original font is a
major undertaking, and each letter and symbol becomes a work of art
fitting into a larger artistic scheme. Douglas Hofstadter, the author of
3 of the most fascinating books on the overlap of technology and art,
has used the concept of fonts as a way of exploring issues in the field
of Artificial Intelligence. He poses the question, for example, of what
really makes a letter, in all its many forms, always recognizable? If
you try to analyse this, you'll find it is not a trivial question - just
check through a Letraset Font catalogue and see if you can isolate the
specific quality that makes an A an A.

    Your Amiga comes with a set of System fonts in the Fonts
directory on your Workbench, and to see them listed, enter in the CLI
            > DIR sys:fonts opt a
or just open Notepad and select the various fonts from the menu. You
could also get your hands on a little utility called "Whichfont" which
runs through all the fonts in your fonts directory in all the possible
combinations of styles (italic, underline,etc) and sizes.
They are an odd selection, ranging from the simplicity of Topaz (the
font you usually see by default) to the baroque Emerald and Sapphire.
Luckily, there are many others available, both commercially and in the
Public Domain, which you can import into those programs which can handle
fonts, such as NotePad, Deluxe Paint, Pagesetter, etc:

    * Public Domain - there are approximately 35 fonts available on
                  the Fish Disks, and as occasional releases,
              which are extremely varied, and give a lot of
              zap to your screen or printout. A couple are
              included on MEGADISC2 and it is explained below
                          how to use them in your own programs.

    * Commercial    - ZUMA FONTS are available from your dealer on
              3 discs, and range from 14-point up to 127-point,
              allowing a great range of sizes. Also available
              are the JETSET fonts (not seen yet) which can
              be downloaded to a laser printer, if you're
              lucky enough to have such a device.

    There are two ways to use a non-system font in a program: either
copy the entire font to the fonts directory of the program disc, or
ASSIGN it through the CLI. The first method is good for installing that
font on that disc for all subsequent sessions, and the second is good
for making use of a particular font or fonts for that session only.

COPYING A FONT
    Say you wanted to copy the font ASTRA 16 which is sitting in the
Fonts directory of MEGADISC2. (The following assumes 2 drives - check
the appropriate article in this issue for details on using one drive).
Get into the CLI, and enter:
            > cd sys:fonts
            > makedir astra
            > copy df1:fonts/astra/16 to df0:fonts/astra
            > copy df1:fonts/astra.font to df0:fonts
Now the Astra 16 (16 is the point size) font is sitting in the fonts
directory of your system disc, and if you now open NotePad and check
the fonts menu you'll find it sitting there waiting to be used. This
process can be followed to copy any font to any disc you like.

    To copy both the fonts in Megadisc:fonts to your system disc at
one time, simply do the following:
            > cd df1:fonts
            > copy to df0:fonts all
and they'll all go in one after the other.

ASSIGNING FONTS
    If you were to get the MEGADISC Theme disc on FONTS (see the
SUBS&EXTRAS drawer for details) and you wanted to use all the 8-point
fonts in the SMALLFONTS directory in your Deluxe Paint program, you
could simply assign the program to use these fonts for the session, instead
of copying them all in. Copying them all would take up space on your
Dpaint disc, and might cause problems due to not being able to be fitted
in the Dpaint fonts menu. So with Dpaint in df0: and the Fonts disc in
df1:, enter
            > assign fonts: df1:smallfonts
(It may be necessary to copy the ASSIGN command into the   c   directory
of your DPaint disc - no such problem if you're doing this for NOTEPAD.)
This will result in the system redirecting any call to load fonts to
look in the smallfonts directory in the disc in the external drive. When
you next boot up, you'll have the normal fonts to call on. Of course,
you might find that there are a few fonts that you like and often want to
use, in which case you can go through the copying procedure explained
above. (For more information on the ASSIGN command, see the appropriate
article in the CLIstuff drawer).
* CAVEAT - the Public Domain fonts, while excellent, are not all designed
           for use with the various STYLE variations (italic, etc), and
       may cause problems if you try to do so - it's probably best
       to use them as is. All the commercial fonts, however, are
       designed for use with the various style options.

DESKTOP PUBLISHING APPLICATIONS
    All these techniques can be used with the DTP packages available
for the Amiga, such as PAGESETTER and PUBLISHER. By importing fonts into
Pagesetter, I've been able to get some good results even with printouts
on an Okimate 20, which for its price is an excellent printer. See the
article on Desktop Publishing elsewhere on MEGADISC.

SETFONT
    This is a useful utility which allows you to change the font of
the Workbench and the CLI to any other font you have available, and can
be used in your startup-sequence to automatically use the required font
rather than the usual Topaz font that you always see. You'll find it on
the MEGADISC Font disc along with a lot of other useful font-related
information and utilities. There is a font called CLEAN 8 which is a
sharpened up Topaz font and which better for reading on screen, especially
in Interlace mode. Similarly there is a MICROFONT which is about point 6
and tiny, but good for getting the maximum number of characters onscreen
at once. Any of these can be used as your system font by using SETFONT
in the startup-sequence.

A FINAL NOTE FOR THE CREATIVE
    On the System 1.2 EXTRAS disc you'll find a Font Editor which
can be used to create your own fonts, either from scratch or by modifying
available fonts. If you do create a new font, and would like others to
use it, send it in to us and we'll put it on a future issue of MEGADISC,
with of course a note describing the source of the gift.

END OF FONTS
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