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OS/2 Shareware BBS: 11 Util
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11-Util.zip
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fntf30a.zip
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README.TXT
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1997-02-23
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************************************************************
* README FILE FOR FontFolder 3.0A *
************************************************************
FontFolder 3.0 A is a maintenance release for version 3.0 that
fixes the following problems:
* Install program would not install to a directory path longer
than 31 characters.
* Helvetica and Times New Roman fonts that come with OS/2 could
not be registered in a Library.
The files replaced in version 3.0A are marked below with an
asterisk.
To upgrade FontFolder 3.0 to FontFolder 3.0A, follow the
directions given below for installing FontFolder. You MUST run
the install program to upgrade because the FontFolder ini file
needs to be updated for the new version number.
FILES FOR FONTFOLDER VERSION 3.0
DISKETTE VERSION
The diskette for FontFolder Version 3.0 should contain the
following files:
BCKGNDVG.BMZ Compressed VGA bitmap used by Install program
BCKGNDXG.BMZ Compressed XGA bitmap used by Install program
CATALOG.TXT Used to customize font catalog printing
CHARBOX.TXT Used to customize specimen sheet printing
COMPRESS.DLL Module used to decompress Install bitmaps
FFCLEAN.EX@ Compressed form of the FontFolder Cleanup
module
FFPRNMOD.EX@ Compressed form of the FontFolder print
module - not directly executable
* FILE_ID.DIZ Brief description in DIZ format
* FINSTALL.PKG Package file used by Install program
* FONTFOLD.EX@ Compressed form of the FontFolder program file
FONTFOLD.HL@ Compressed form of the FontFolder Help file
FONTFOLD.NEW Brief description of new and changed
features of Version 3.0
* INSTALL.EXE FontFolder Installation program
INSTALL.HLP Help file for Install program
LICENSE.TXT FontFolder License file and registration
information
LINE.TXT Used to customize specimen sheet printing
PGRAPH.TXT Used to customize specimen sheet printing
* README.TXT This file
BMTORDER.FRM Order form and ordering instructions for
BMT Micro
In addition, the diskette should contain the file FNTFLIB.ZIP
described in the following On-line Version list, and the file
OS2FNFAQ.INF which is a VIEWable copy of the current version
of OS/2 Fonts Frequently Asked Questions.
ON-LINE VERSION
On-line users should look for the following files. FNTF30.ZIP
is required while FNTFLIB.ZIP is optional.
FNTF30.ZIP Contains the files named above.
Please use this file if you upload
FontFolder to a bulletin board or on-line
service.
FNTFLIB.ZIP Contains the FontFolder pre-registered
libraries for popular font CDROM's as shown
below.
BST500.FZ2 Pre-registered library for the Bitstream
500 Font CDROM (includes library and text
documentation file). ZIP format.
COR25.FZ2 Pre-registered library for the fonts on
the CorelDraw 2.5 for OS/2 CDROM.
(includes library and text documentation
file). ZIP format.
HB1093.FZ2 Pre-registered library for the fonts on
the October, 1993 Hobbes OS/2 CDROM.
(includes library and text documentation
file). ZIP format.
EX2000.FZ2 Pre-registered library for the fonts on
the Expert Software 2000 Fantastic Fonts
CDROM. (includes libraries for entire
CDROM and also by-subdirectory libraries
and text documentation files. ZIP format.
My thanks to Larry Ebbit for creating this
library and for giving me permission to
ship it with FontFolder.
FNTFSTAR.ZIP Pre-registered library for the fonts on the
StarMedia CDROM shipped with StarOffice.
GENERAL
This README file gives basic information for installing
FontFolder. For more detailed instructions on using
FontFolder, consult the on-line Help for the Install program
after starting it.
If you have the fntf30.zip file, unzip it to a temporary
directory and then follow these instructions to install from
this temporary directory. Users with the FontFolder diskette
should insert the diskette in their diskette drive, and then
proceed as follows.
NEW FONTFOLDER USERS
Either open the drive/directory containing the FontFolder files
and double-click on the INSTALL.EXE icon, or change to that
directory from a command line and type INSTALL and press ENTER.
(NOTE: If you prefer the command line approach, you MUST first
change directories to the install directory. The install
program will not run otherwise.)
The install program offers options to install FontFolder,
uninstall FontFolder, recreate FontFolder's ini file, and
recreate FontFolder's program object (icon). Choose Install
from the menu bar and follow the instructions. You can read
the On-line Help for the Install program for the details of
using these features.
USERS UPGRADING FROM AN EARLIER VERSION OF FONTFOLDER
FontFolder now comes with an Install program. You can no
longer install it by just unzipping it to a directory and
starting it up. Instead, you should unzip it to a temporary
directory and then either double-click on the INSTALL.EXE icon,
or change to that directory from a command line and enter
INSTALL. (NOTE: If you prefer the command line approach, you
MUST first change directories to the install directory. The
install program will not run otherwise.)
The install program offers options to install FontFolder,
uninstall FontFolder, recreate FontFolder's ini file, and
recreate FontFolder's program object (icon). Choose Install
from the menu bar and follow the instructions. You can read
the On-line Help for the Install program for the details of
using these features.
You can choose to either install Version 3.0 into the same
directory as your current version of FontFolder, or you can
install to a separate directory. It is possible to have both
versions of FontFolder on your system at the same time, but you
should be aware that neither version will be aware of or be
able to deal with the other version's installed FontPacks. The
fonts will simply look like any other installed fonts. In
order to use FontPacks you will need to make sure to install
and uninstall them with the same version of FontFolder.
1) Installing over an older version of FontFolder
Simply set the Install program to install to the existing
FontFolder directory. The Install program will be able to
use your existing ini and data files, but it will convert
them to a new format needed to support the mixing of Type 1
and TrueType fonts. The new data files will have extensions
of FF3 and FP3. The old FF2 and FP2 files will be left in
place and can be deleted once you are satisfied that the
upgrade has been successful.
2) Installing to a new directory, but using the existing
FontFolder ini and data files.
Create the new directory where you want to install
FontFolder and copy the FONTFOLD.INI file and all .FF2 and
.FP2 files in your old directory to this new directory.
Specify this new directory as the target directory when
installing FontFolder. The Install program will recognize
and use the old ini and data files. It will detect that you
have moved the FONTFOLD.INI file and ask you if you want to
update the directories stored in FONTFOLD.INI. You should
accept this offer unless you have set things up in a special
way and know that you want to leave the old directory
locations in place.
USERS INSTALLING OVER THE FONTFOLDER 3.0 BETA.
You should be able to simply point the Install program at
the directory containing the FontFolder 3.0 Beta and let it
overwrite the Beta files. It should pick up and use the ini
and data files you have created with the beta.
If you are nervous about installing final code over a Beta,
choose the Uninstall option of the Install program to
uninstall the Beta first. If you want to preserve your ini
file customizations and the libraries and fontpacks you have
created with the Beta, you can first make a backup of
FONTFOLD.INI and all of the .FF3 and .FP3 files before
running the uninstall program. Then, after the uninstall
but before installing the new version, copy these files
back to the directory where you are installing version 3.0.
(But this is a lot of work just to accomplish exactly the
same thing as will happen if you just install directly over
the Beta).
*****************************************************************
THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS INFORMATION THAT SHOULD BE READ BY BOTH
NEW USERS AND THOSE UPGRADING FROM AN EARLIER VERSION. THERE ARE
SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN THE INFORMATION SINCE THE LAST RELEASE OF
FONTFOLDER, SO UPGRADERS SHOULD BE SURE TO READ THIS.
*****************************************************************
PROBLEMS ON FONTFOLDER STARTUP:
When you start FontFolder the first time you may find that it
complains about a number of fonts that you have already
"installed" in OS/2 through the OS/2 Font Pallete. This can be
for a number of reasons outlined below, all of which represent
legitimate problems that FontFolder is attempting to deal with.
(Of course it may also be true that FontFolder is incorrectly
objecting to a legitimately installed font. If that appears to
be the case, please bring the situation to my attention via one
of the routes described at the end of this ReadMe file.)
Situations where FontFolder will object to an already
"installed" font:
1. The OS/2 Font Pallete is unfortunately not too
discriminating in what it will "install" in OS/2. There are
examples of font AFM files that are totally unreadable because
of garbage in the file. The Font Pallete will "install" these
files, although they are unusable and show up in the Font
Pallete list as blank lines. FontFolder will reject a file if
the OS/2 api that is used to query font information can't at
least return a name for the font (the blank line in the Font
Pallete occurs because no font name was returned for the file).
2. Users have been known to install a font in OS/2 and then
later move the OFM and PFB files for this font to a different
directory or even erase them, without first un-installing the
font from OS/2. However, OS/2 keeps a record in OS2.INI of
where it thinks the files are for installed fonts, and when it
can't find them there on bootup, things get quite confusing.
The user finds that a previously installed font "no longer
works", but when they try to re-install it they find they can't
because OS/2 insists it is already installed. FontFolder
checks the listings in OS2.INI and verifies that both a PFB
file and an OFM file exist where OS2.INI claims they are
located. It behaves in a similar fashion for the TrueType TTF
files.
In both of the above cases, FontFolder a) does not show the
font in the installed fonts list, and b) puts up a message box
alerting the user to the problem and offering to remove the
entry for this font from OS2.INI. You should note what font
files FontFolder can't find, and then accept the offer to clean
up OS2.INI. If the problem is simply that the font files have
been moved, you can then go and find out where the font files
are currently located (if they still exist) and register the
fonts with the Library from the correct location.
KNOWN PROBLEMS/LIMITATIONS:
1. Warp 4 has a bug which causes it to hang or significantly
corrupt the desktop when certain fonts are installed. This
occurs for both Type 1 and TrueType fonts. Users who are
upgrading from earlier versions of OS/2 and FontFolder should
be aware that fonts that worked without problems in earlier
versions can now cause either an immediate hang or enough OS
corruption that at some point in the near future the system
will hang. At this time the only solution is to find and
temporarily remove these fonts from both the set of fonts
installed in OS/2 and from the FontFolder libraries. The
latter is important since simply browsing these fonts or
attempting to print a Font Catalog will kill the system when
one of these "bad" fonts is loaded.
The easiest way to identify the fonts that cause Warp 4 to hang
is to browse your fonts with the FontFolder Browser. Any font
that does not display in the browser window is a problem font,
even if it doesn't immediately hang the system. Write down the
name of the font (your system is about to crash, if it hasn't
already, so you can't depend on being able to do anything after
you have browsed this font), reboot this system, and use
FontFolder to a) uninstall this font if you have it installed,
and b) remove it from all libraries and fontpacks. You do NOT
need to remove the font files from your system. There is
nothing wrong with the font. When IBM provides the fix for
this problem (supposedly coming in the first FixPack) you will
be able to add the font back to your system. Note that the
system does not become corrupted simply by having the font
installed; you have to actually use the font to cause the
problem. So removing it as described above is a safe way to
temporarily clean your system of these problem fonts.
So far, all the problem fonts I have encountered have exhibited
the trait of not displaying in the FontFolder Browser window.
However, if you still see OS/2 crashing with certain fonts, but
all fonts display properly (i.e. this is a delayed crash so
you can't pinpoint which font caused the problem), you can most
likely pin down the problem font by making one point size
change in the Browser while each font is displayed (you need to
change the point size each time, for each font). In my
experience this always causes an immediate OS/2 crash, whether
it is done with FontFolder, the OS/2 Font Palette, the System
Editor or any other application I've tried. Since it is a lot
more work to change the point size every time for each font, I
don't recommend this approach as the intial screening.
2. When running FontFolder with versions of OS/2 prior to Warp
4, OS/2 does not allow FontFolder to remove any font from
memory that was not installed by FontFolder in the current
session. With Warp 4 this behavior has changed, and it appears
that FontFolder can now immediately uninstall any font that is
not currently in use by another application. However, I
haven't yet been able to fully scope out the conditions under
which this is true (this is now and has always been
undocumented behavior), so my advice to users of Warp 4 is to
read the following and be aware of the situation even if fonts
seem to uninstall immediately.
FontFolder always updates the OS2.INI file and shows the font
as removed, but if you check the Font Palette or look in the
font list presented by your application, you will see that the
font is still there. It will be gone the next time you reboot.
This is not a problem if you don't change fonts frequently
since any font removed by FontFolder will be gone the next time
you reboot. However, if you work with large numbers of fonts
during a single session, you may end of with very large numbers
of fonts installed in OS/2, with performance and even perhaps
error problems. The way to avoid this is to only keep a
minimum number of fonts, the ones you use all the time, loaded
in OS/2 at startup. Then start FontFolder and keep it open
during the entire session if you are going to work with large
numbers (100's) of fonts during the session. FontFolder can be
minimized when you are not using it, but don't close it. This
way, FontFolder can completely remove any font it installed (as
long as you aren't currently using the font in an open
application). Before closing FontFolder, clean up your
installed font list by removing all the fonts other than your
basic font set. (HINT: Define a FontPack to be your basic set
of fonts. Then just before closing FontFolder, remove
everything extra and install this FontPack. That will
guarantee that you always have the correct base set installed
on bootup).
3. It is easy to browse large numbers of fonts in the Browser
window with FontFolder. In versions of OS/2 prior to Warp 3
this can quickly consume large amounts of memory, causing
problems if you are short of swap file space. Look in the
online Help Index for "browsing fonts" and read this section to
understand what the memory requirements are when browsing
fonts. This problem has been fixed in Warp 3 and presumably
is also fixed in Warp 4.
4. Versions of OS/2 prior to Warp 4 had a memory leak connected
with printing font samples that works out to approximately 7.5
KB of lost memory for every font printed. This may not sound
like much, but if you print a Font Catalog for the Bitstream
500 Font CDROM, you will lose access to 3.75 Megabytes of your
virtual memory, i.e. your swap file will be 3.75 Megabytes
closer to being full than it would be otherwise. This effect
is cumulative, i.e. if you print the same Font Catalog a
second time you will lose another 3.75 Megabytes of memory.
This memory can not be recovered except by rebooting OS/2. IBM
confirmed that this leak is in OS/2 back in the Warp 3 time
frame, and I tried to open an APAR. But about that time IBM
changed their system so that it was no longer possible for
developers to open APARs without buying the rather expensive
support contract they offer. As a result, this APAR never got
opened, and as far as I know the same leak exists in Warp 4
(although I haven't yet had time to test for it). Until a fix
is available, if you are printing large numbers of fonts, you
will need to pay attention to your swap file size.
5. Past OMNI drivers have had multiple problems that prevent
FontFolder from tracking print jobs in the OS/2 Print Spooler.
FontFolder must be able to track print jobs to know when it is
safe to uninstall fonts that have been temporarily installed
for the purpose of printing. As explained above the APARs I
attempted to open for this never got opened. The latest OMNI
drivers may or may not have fixed this problem. In the mean
time I have implemented a workaround that requires the users of
the OMNI driver to manually inform FontFolder when the last job
has printed. If you use the OMNI driver, turn off the "Enable
manual spool file monitoring" checkbox on the Printer dialog
and see if you can successfully print uninstalled fonts. If
you can, the driver has been fixed, and you can leave this
option unchecked. If uninstalled fonts won't print, re-enable
this checkbox.
*********************************************************************
REGISTERING FONTFOLDER:
The version of FontFolder you download electronically is a
fully functional demonstration copy. You can carry out all
operations, but after a period of time the program will begin
prompting you to register and pay for the program. You can
register and pay for it through a variety of mechansims as
described below and in the LICENSE.TXT file. When you register
the program you will be provided with an electronic key which
will permanently unlock this version of FontFolder.
FontFolder can be registered either as a full version with
access to all facilities, or as a "Lite" version, which has
access to all facilities except for printing. Registered users
of FontFolder 2.1 may upgrade to the corresponding version of
FontFolder 3.0 without charge. No action is necessary to
upgrade; the current registration key will work with FontFolder
3.0. Users of 1.x versions of FontFolder have free access to
FontFolder 3.0 Lite using their existing registration key. To
use printing they must upgrade their registration to the full
version of FontFolder 3.0. See the LICENSE.TXT file or look in
the On-line Help Index under Registration Information for the
details of registering.
Registration Fees:
New User Registration for FontFolder 3.0 $30
New User Registration for FontFolder 3.0 Lite $20
Upgrade from Version 1.x or FontFolder 2.x or 3.0 Lite $10
*********************************************************************
FONTFOLDER SUPPORT:
FontFolder is supported on Compuserve in OS2BVEN, Section 1 (GO
OS2SHARE), by Compuserve e-mail to [75013,1701], and by
Internet e-mail to 75013.1701@compuserve.com or
ccullum@ibm.net. I also monitor the Internet newsgroups
comp.os.os2.app and comp.os.os2.utilities on a daily basis.
Notice of new releases of FontFolder will be posted on
Compuserve in OS2BVEN, Section 1 and in the Internet newsgroup
comp.os.os2.announce.
The latest versions of FontFolder can always be found on
Compuserve in OS2BVEN, Lib 1, and at BMT Micro's Web site,
http://www.bmtmicro.com. It should also be on ftp-os2.nmsu.edu
and the other OS/2 public ftp sites, but I cannot guarantee
this since access to these sites can be quite variable.
For all of the above locations, the FontFolder zip file will be
named FNTFnn.ZIP where nn is the version number.
Cliff Cullum
PVsoft
2/1/97