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FONTEDIT.DOC
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1991-12-05
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FONTEDIT RELEASE 1.0 12/91
---------------------------
Written by Chris Howe
Dept. of CS & EE
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405
*********************************************************************
*** This Program is Copyright (c) 1991 by Chris Howe ***
*** Version 1.0 of this program is released to the public domain. ***
*********************************************************************
INTRODUCTION:
Fontedit is an interactive, mouse-oriented editing tool for
manipulating the character sets of DOS based computers equipped
with VGA graphics hardware. Right now, it can only edit text mode
fonts, but the capability to edit graphics mode fonts may be added
later if there is sufficient interest.
A 286 CPU and VGA hardware are required. A mouse is
required to use interactive mode.
INTERACTIVE MODE:
Type "Fontedit" with no parameters, and the Work Box will pop up.
The large rectangle on the left side of the Work Box is an enlarged
view of the currently selected character. Clicking in this area
will toggle various pixels of the character on and off.
The small box to the right of this area gives an actual-size view
of the selected character, as well as its ASCII code. When you
run Fontedit, the initial selection is the Null character (ASCII 0).
THE TEN BUTTONS:
Clicking on any of the ten buttons will cause the following actions:
NEXT: Increment the ASCII code by one, and edit that character.
Pressing Next at code 255 will go to code 0.
PREV: Decrement the ASCII code by one, and edit that character.
Pressing Prev at code 0 will go to code 255.
LIST: Display a table of all 256 characters. Click on any character
to go directly to it and begin editing. When the table pops
up, the mouse cursor will be on the currently selected
character, so you can click on it to return to the Work Box
without changing anything.
FILL: Turn all of the pixels in the selected character on. This can
save editing time if the character you want to create make is
going to be composed mostly of pixels that are on.
KILL: Turn all of the pixels in the selected character off.
RESTORE ONE: Restore the currently selected character to its
pixel pattern that was found when Fontedit was started.
SUGGESTION: If you are making radical font changes, save a
font file containing the normal, default VGA font before you
begin working (see file functions below). Since the restore
functions only remember what the font was since the latest
invocation of Fontedit, this could save you from having to
reboot to reset things.
RESTORE ALL: Restore all characters to their pixel patterns that
were found when Fontedit was started.
SAVE: Save the current state of the font to a file on disk.
The filename entry box may seem small, but it can scroll
horizontally to accommodate long paths. The arrow keys are
not active, but the scrolling will occur automatically as
needed while you are typing characters or backspace editing.
The escape key will cancel the save operation, as will
pressing Enter with no filename specified.
NOTE:
The mouse is not enabled during this operation.
LOAD: Load a font file from disk into the VGA font hardware.
When you click on the Load button, a list of the files
in the current directory will appear, along with a box
above it containing the current path.
WHAT TO DO:
- You can move to a filename with the up and down arrow keys.
- Pressing enter will load the file.
- The list will scroll for larger directories, and the
page-up and page-down keys are active.
- Subdirectories are preceded by the character, and
pressing enter will switch to that directory.
- To move up a directory, press enter with the selection
over the ".." entry, which is preceded by the character.
- You can cancel the load operation by pressing Escape
at any time.
NOTES:
The mouse is not enabled during this operation.
You can only access the current default drive.
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE:
The directory menu style is modeled after
Vern Buerg's classic LIST utility.
EXIT: Quit, return to DOS.
COMMAND LINE MODE:
Fontedit [-f filename]
This will load a font file that was previously created with
Fontedit, without going into interactive mode. This allows
you to load a customized font from your autoexec.bat file.
A mouse is not required for this mode.
Note: do not type the square brackets. They indicate that the
enclosed argument is not required to run Fontedit.
NOTES:
A small amount of screen interference is normal while the program
updates the VGA's internal font tables.