• Engine to scan fonts with duplicate fonts report
• Online Help (Read me)
• Keyboards for Spain, Brazil, and MacOS 8.6 Dvorak
• FontBuddy Clipboard
• Sample texts for English, French, German, Italian,…
Changes:
• Built with RealBasic 2.0.1
• Options menu replaces Options tab
• Flag contextual menu remove
• One option (in Options menu) to save all settings (Font & Sizes, Window, Sample Text,…). It also saves keyboard, and (all) others options.
• New “Char selector” with octal and hex values
• Keystrokes has changed: <shift> <alt> E is now Shift-Opt-E
• Style “Underline” removed
Bug fixes:
• “Smart font Switching” option doesn’t need to relaunch FB
• a display bug related to AboutBox window
• another display bug related to dark themes of Kaleidoscope
• a preference bug, saving an empty Font Sample Text
What is it?
FontBuddy is a Font Viewer. It shows all characters of any installed font. It gives keystrokes to access special characters. It also display font information. It is easy to use, quick, optimized for screen use, and MacOS 8.6 savvy.
What can FontBuddy do?
The only aim of FontBuddy is to show, on screen, all the characters of a font. To do this, FontBuddy window is divided in four tabs:
• In the first tab, you can see all chars of the selected font, at the selected size. Here, you can copy characters and paste them in others documents. If you type a character on the keyboard, then it is display in the second tab.
• In the second tab, you can browse through characters, one by one. For each character, you get its ASCII/Octal/Hex code, its PostScript name, and the keystrokes to get it. To select a character, just type it on the keyboard. You can also select its ascii code with the scroll bar or enter it in the ascii/octal/hex field. A last solution, is to select the character in the first tab, then to switch to the second tab.
•The third tab displays a sample text. You can change this text and save it as the default sample text.
• The fourth Tab gives informations about the font (PSName, bitmap sizes, TT/PS version,…)
• There is also a floating window FontBuddy Clipboard available from the Options menu. It can store any character of any font. The current font of FontBuddy Clipboard is the same as the main window, but the current size, is the size of the Font Chars tab.
How much does it cost?
FontBuddy is distributed as Shareware. You can try it for one month. If you want to continue to use it, you should pay the shareware fee : a License for a single user costs $10, a Site License costs $50, a WorldWide License costs $100.
You can pay with KAGI registration system: open the Register program that accompanies FontBuddy, then follow the instructions. You can also register online at http://order.kagi.com/?U25&S
System Requirements
FontBuddy should run on any Power Macintosh under MacOS 7.5 or greater.
Contact
You can contact the author by email at vjalby@kagi.com . To find the latest version of FontBuddy, go to http://members.aol.com/FontBuddy/
Keyboard Shortcuts
Use the Ctrl-Tab key to switch to the next tab and the Shift-Ctrl-Tab key to switch to the previous tab.
Use Ctrl-LeftArrow or Ctrl-RightArrow to select the previous or the next font.
Use Ctrl-DownArrow or Ctrl-UpArrow to select the previous or the next font size.
Use Ctrl-Shift-DownArrow or Ctrl-Shift-UpArrow to decrease or increase the font size by 1 point.
In the second tab:
• use Opt-LeftArrow or Opt-RightArrow to select the previous or the next char.
• use Opt-UpArrow or Opt-DownArrow to select the first char (ASCII 1) or the last char (ASCII 256)
In the first two tabs, any character typed on the keyboard, will switch to Font Selector Tab, then show the character.
Scanning Fonts
To display font informations in the fourth tab, FontBuddy first need to scan your Fonts folder. Because it may take some time, you have to do it yourself, by selecting Scan Fonts Folder… in the Options menu.
FontBuddy will then display its Scan Fonts Folder Setup window. Here you can select an extra folder where you store fonts. You can also select the duplicate font problems that FontBuddy will report.
When you click “Start”, FontBuddy will read Bitmap/TrueType font suitcases, and PostScript font files. Then, it will analyze your fonts, searching for duplicate Bitmap, TT or PS fonts. The result of its job will be displayed in a Fonts Report window. (This window can also be opened with the FontBuddy Report… item in the Help menu.)
If you live with duplicate fonts, FontBuddy may not display accurate informations in the fourth tab.
Note that FontBuddy is very careful when scanning fonts (suitcases). It first copies the font suitcase in a temporary folder, then scan this copy. It is slower, but safer.
Finally, if you have a lot of fonts, you should give more memory to FontBuddy when scanning fonts.
Preferences (Options menu)
The preferences and default settings of FontBuddy can be set up with the Options menu
• Show control characters: when checked, the “Font Chars” tab will show all 256 ASCII characters of a font. Otherwise, first (ASCII 1 to 32), 127 and 256 characters are not displayed.
• Use smart font switching: switching between fonts with keyboard, or with the Previous font or Next font menu items, will select the next/previous font in alphabetic order. However, some Postscript fonts have style prefixes like B, BI, N,… Thus, e.g., B Helvetica Bold will be between AvantGarde and Bookman. The option "Use smart font switching" will try to correct this. Note that the Font menu is left unchanged.
• Keyboard: select here the keyboard you use. It will modify the keystrokes given in the Char Selector tab and the default sample Text in Font Sample Tab.
• Scan Fonts Folder…: Will scan you System Fonts Folder to find the font informations (displayed in the fourth tab) and report duplicated fonts problems. More details in the Font Scanning section.
• Save current settings…: will save the current FontBuddy settings. that is : “Show control characters” option, “Use smart font switching” option, selected keyboard, Font and sizes for each tab, window position, Sample Text (in the third tab), FontBuddy clipboard window position (if opened).
• Revert to default settings…: Revert the settings described above to FontBuddy default.
• Show FontBuddy Clipboard: will show FontBuddy Clipboard window.
Version History
Version 1.0 [1999/03/16] First public release
Version 1.1 [1999/04/01]
• Add Keystrokes for low ASCII characters.
• Correct Keystroke <space> for UK and Netherlands keyboards.
• Add keyboards for Australia, Canada (Fr, ISO, CSA), Denmark and Norway
• Add Flag Keyboard Icon with popup menu
• Add Smart Font Name Option
• Add Next font/Previous font items in Font Menu
• FontBuddy Logo is now Kaleidoscope savvy.
• Add a style menu
• Change Low Ascii Option to Control Characters.
• Remove ASCII 127 and 256 from standard display.
• Shortcuts to switch between tabs, fonts, sizes.
• Size Menu Item “Other…” added
• MenuItem File Close added.
• The font selector now always shows all characters, whatever the option “Show control characters” is.
Version 1.1.1 [1999/04/12]
• Add keyboards for Finland and Swiss (Fr and Gr)
• Correct keystrokes for accents (with dead keys)
Version 1.2 [1999/05/20]
• Build with RealBasic 2.0.1
• New tab “fonts infos”
• Font scanning with duplicate fonts report.
• Options menu.
• One option (in Options menu) to save all settings.
• Keyboard list has also moved to Options menu.
• Flag contextual menu remove.
• “Smart font Switching” doesn’t need to relaunch FB anymore.
• Char selector redesigned with octal and hex values
• Keystrokes changed, e.g., <shift> <alt> E is now Shift-Opt-E
• New preference (format) file to store font listing.
• Remove timer for unregistered users.
• Preferences are not saved for unregistered users.
• Fix a display bug (related to AboutBox window).
• Fix a preference bug, saving an empty Font Sample Text.
• Basic Online Help (Read me)
• Keyboards for Spain, Brazil and MacOS 8.6 Dvorak
• FontBuddy Clipboard window.
• Hand cursor for url in AboutBox
• Fix a bug in Tab 2, not showing character when using Kaleidoscope with dark theme (and white font)
I want to thank all beta testers and users for their suggestions and bug reports. Among others, Mark Handler and Steve Evans help me to improve FontBuddy.
Legal Stuff
Use this software, FontBuddy, at your own risk. The author, Vincent Jalby, makes no claims as to the fitness of this software, FontBuddy, for any particular purpose. There is no warranties, expressed or implied.
FontBuddy 1.2 uses C. Brunel’s FreeMem, a free Plug-In for RealBasic.
This application has been build using RealBasic 2.0.1 from RealSoftware. For more information, check out http://www.realsoftware.com/.
