The ASCII Chart Desk Accessory is a tool which makes it easy to see all characters in a font at a glance, determine a character’s hexadecimal and decimal value along with what the DA considers the best way to generate it, copy specific character(s) to the clipboard, and send font samples to a file or printer. Note that while characters from the selected font are displayed on the chart, Geneva is used for character information on the right side of the window.
Installation:
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System 6.0.x users (or those using earlier systems) may install ASCII Chart into their System file using the Font/DA Mover or open it with a utility like Suitcase II or Master Juggler.
System 7.0 users should open the suitcase file and drag ASCII Chart out of it. This icon may then be placed into the Apple Menu folder or used as a “double-clickable” application. The suitcase file can be trashed once the ASCII Chart has been dragged out of it. System 7.0 should display a cool, custom icon for the ASCII Chart. If it uses a generic icon instead, you must change the ASCII Chart’s file Type to “dfil” and file Creator to “ASC4” using ResEdit, DiskTop, Vantage, McSink, or any other utility capable of altering “Finder Information.” Then rebuild the desktop (and lose “Get Info” comments) or copy the ASCII Chart to another disk and then back again.
Usage:
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Choosing the “ASCII Chart” DA causes a window to be opened and adds the “Chart” menu to the menu bar. This menu contains a sample window item, three hierarchical menus, and the names of all currently installed fonts. The window is filled with a chart displaying all 256 chars or a font sample, depending on what was in use the last time the DA was used.
Type a character, click on a character’s cell, or paste up to 255 characters from the clipboard. Option-click on a character to copy it to the clipboard or use the standard cut/copy commands to copy the currently selected character. Hold down the shift key to append a character to existing clipboard text when cutting/copying.
Pasting more than one character causes each character to highlight in sequence. Click the mouse or press a key after a paste to abort this display. Hold down the shift key during a paste to speed the display.
Press the command key to display the currently selected character at 72 point; depress the caps lock key to show the base line.
Click on the right side of the window (not on the chart) to display basic usage info; shift-click to see the info displayed in the selected font and size. Click in the zoom box when the chart is shown to resize the window to show/hide the character information area on the right.
Choose a font’s name in the Chart menu to cause that font to be displayed.
The “Size” hierarchical menu is used to change the displayed font size of the chart.
Choose the “Sample” menu item to replace the chart with a font sample, add a scroll bar and grow box, and rename the window to indicate the current font and style(s). The sample text and size are defined in the preferences window by choosing the “Window” item in the “Sample” popup menu. The currently defined size for the sample text is shown in brackets in the “Sample” menu item. Style and font may be adjusted dynamically using the appropriate menu items. Choose one of the other items from the “Size” hierarchical menu to redisplay the chart.
Choose the “Sample” menu item with a shift key down to display a window which allows the font sample size to be changed “on the fly.” The sample text can only be adjusted in the preferences window.
The “Style” hierarchical menu is used to change the displayed font style.
The “Output” hierarchical menu is used control the various output options and preferences.
Choose the “Page Setup…” menu item to display the standard page setup window for the currently chosen printer. The Page Setup will be saved between sessions. The “Print Samples…”, “Print Spec Sheet…”, “Print Character Chart…”, and “Print Registration Form…” menu items display the standard print dialog. Multiple copies and page ranges are supported.
The Font Sample consists of up to five samples of the selected font as defined in the preferences window, described below. It will use as many pages as required by the samples or as specified in the page range.
The Font Spec Sheet consists of three pages. The first page contains one-line samples of the selected font at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 18, and 24 point, in plain, bold, italic, and bold-italic styles. The second page contains justified samples in plain, bold, italic, and bold-italic styles in 10/10, 10/12, and 10/14 point leading. The third page is a mixture of one-line samples in plain style and justified samples in plain, bold, italic, and bold-italic styles. Justified samples use a non-standard means of determining line breaks to provide for even “color.” Because multiple styles are used, some printers may be unable to print Font Spec Sheets for complex fonts, or may image them very slowly. Adjust the page range to print specific pages.
The Character Chart is a table similar to the one displayed by the DA, but character size is scaled downward from 24 point until the largest character fits within the grid. Only one page is required. The decimal value of each character will, optionally, be drawn in the corner of each character’s cell using the font specified by the “Title font” popup menu in the preferences window, described below. Characters which have no corresponding bitmap will have their cell filled with a gray pattern.
If the shift key is down when one of the font printing menu items is chosen, a window is displayed which allows multiple fonts to be selected for printing. The currently selected font will already be selected. Shift-click or command-click to select or deselect font names. Enter the first few characters of a font’s name to select and auto-scroll to the closest matching font. Page ranges apply to all of the selected fonts.
Choose the “Chart to PICT file…” menu item to display the standard file save dialog. The PICT file Character Chart is identical to that produced by printing. It contains several grouped elements and may be read by any program which understands PICT files.
Choose the “Preferences…” item to display a window in which various output options are adjusted. The “Title font” popup menu controls the font which is used by the registration form and in the Sample, Spec Sheet, and Character Chart titles; the “Size” popup menu controls the size. Since the “Use Selected Font” option matches the titles to the font being output, use of an alternate font may be be desired when generating samples of picture or iconic fonts.
The “Sample” popup menu controls the specific sample to which the “Display” popup menu and “Size” item apply. The Sample Window and all five samples for the Font Sample may be adjusted by choosing the appropriate entry in the Sample popup. Choose “None” from the “Display” popup menu to prevent a sample set from being output. The “Character List” is a listing of each character in decimal order. Sizes must be in the range 6-144 point.
The “Sample text” may be up to 255 characters in length. The total number of characters in the sample text field is displayed to the left of the field. This text will be case adjusted for certain fonts. That is, if the selected font has not defined characters a-z, the text will be forced to upper case; if A-Z are not defined, the text will be forced to lower case; if a-z AND A-Z are not defined, the character list will be used in place of the sample text.
Selecting the “Output Character Chart values” checkbox causes the decimal value of each character to be displayed in the corner of each character’s cell in the Character Chart.
Choose the “Print Registration Form…” to print a registration form which may be filled out and returned with any payments or comments regarding this program. The “Title font” popup menu in the preferences window controls which font is used.
Misc:
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Only characters which have a corresponding bitmap (those which do not display the “missing character” symbol) will be output.
Fonts names are output as they appear in the Chart and most Font menus; “true” PostScript names ARE NOT USED. Similarly, the selected font is considered the base font; styles (bold, italic, etc.) are applied to the base font, which may cause some unexpected results on PostScript printers where some “styled” fonts may be printed in plain style.
I have purposely tried to keep the design of all output simple but useful. Most are “self-adjusting” to allow for various page sizes and orientations as well as unusual fonts. It’s an impossible task to create a format that won’t “break” with some font, but it’s my hope that these formats will look better with a larger number of fonts than some of the other font printing programs I’ve seen.
The current position and size of the window, font, size, style, page setup (if changed), and the current window state is saved when the window is closed.
Some very complex fonts (I only know of three) may cause ASCII Chart to bomb when Adobe Type Manager (ATM) draws the chart. If one of these troublesome fonts is saved by the DA (because it was the last font selected), causing it to bomb every time its window is opened, try disabling ATM or deinstalling the offending font and then select the DA again. It should then open with 12 pt. Chicago selected. You may then reinstall the font. Fonts which exhibit this behavior should still be able to be printed by selecting them from the batch print window.
Some fonts (especially those drawn by ATM or TrueType for the first time) may take quite some time to be fully rendered. Pressing the escape key or command-period when the font chart is being drawn, will interrupt the drawing and cause only those characters rendered to be shown on the chart. Drawing cannot be interrupted for the sample window.
This DA should work on any Mac, provided there is sufficient memory available. If it’s used on an older Mac which doesn’t support hierarchical menus, none of the hierarchical menu items will be available and the font chart will default to 12 pt., plain. The Sample Window will be available, but will display the Character List. Additionally, on some older Macs the resources used to determine the keys to press to generate a character may not be available. On these Macs, the DA will not suggest keys to press.
This software is SHAREWARE. Single copy registration is $10. Site licenses, which allow for an unlimited number of copies to be used at a single location, are available for $75. BBS operators may use this version free of charge.
I can be reached at the following electronic addresses.
COMPUSERVE: 70167,3444
GENIE: JPWIND
MCI MAIL: J.WIND
AMERICA ONLINE: JWIND
If you want to send me money or don’t mind the delay, here’s my mailing address.
Jon Wind
2374 Hillwood Drive
Maplewood, MN 55119
New in 4.0:
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1. Added Size, Style, and Output hierarchical menus.
2. Added output of font chart to a PICT file.
3. Added output of font sample, font spec sheet, and font chart to printer.
4. Added optional batch printing of selected fonts.
5. Added preferences menu item.
6. Added sample window option to display larger text samples.
7. Changed usage info “trigger” to a click in the right side of the window.
8. Added optional display of usage info in selected font/size/style.
9. Added command key equivalents.
10. Added ASCII code equivalents for characters 0-31.
11. Added registration form printing, since the DA is now shareware.
12. Added zoom boxes and chart-only view.
13. Added System 7.0 compatibility (no balloon help though).
14. Added specific support for NFNT and TrueType fonts.
15. Added drawing abort for fonts that take a long time to render.
