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readme.fontmaker
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1990-01-10
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Fontmaker 1.0
History: Many years ago while the earth was still cooling, I tried
to hand build a font for Sculpt 3D. It was only a simple font
But soon I realized there had to be a better way. From these
humble beginnings came the monumental task that evolved into Font-
maker 1.0
Operating Instructions: (Batteries not included) To start Fontmaker from
the workbench just click on the icon, from the CLI Just type "1.0". You
will need about 1K free disk space to run fontmaker. This is because
fontmaker is compiled Amiga Basic which requires .bmap files. My
brother came up with a clever way to get rid of these files but at the
temporary expense of 1k of disk space. This space is returned almost
instantly but since things must be written to the disk it must be free
when you start. You will require at least 1k to save any .seen files
you create but since this is already required to start the program this
should not be a problem. Once unleashed or started the Fontmaker will
load a list of your available fonts and display them on the left slider.
If you have a lot of fonts ( I have over 50 ) the slider will allow you
to select which ever you wish to use. The current font is highlighted
and a little orange line is displayed on the slider to show you where it
is. The same is true for the font size except only a few fonts have
enough sizes to fill the slider. To select a font or font size, just
click on it. It will now be the 'Selected font' and all text will be
redisplayed using it. To enter text, click on the "Enter Text" gadget.
A new gadget, "Clear Text" will be displayed, and Enter Text will change
to "Exit Text" You do not necessarily need to Exit text to use the other
gadgets. Needless to say Clear Text erases the screen. I usually enter
the text I want then try several different fonts until I find one I
like. This is also a good time to play with Bold, Italics, and
Underline. Just click on the ON gadget to turn them on, or on OFF to
turn them off. It is interesting to note that smaller, less complex
fonts usually turn out better. This is because the automatic
vectorizing routines are so good that every bend and angle of a complex
font is captured. This causes the resulting scene to be usually
unnecessarily complected. You should experiment with this since
sometimes that is exactly what you are trying to achieve. But for
normal text, use a simple, small, garden variety font. Once you have the
text displayed the way you want it, the next step is to enter a FILE NAME.
To do this click on the FILE NAME gadget. This lights up the File Name
Requester where you enter any valid file name. SCULPT 3D requires a .scene
suffix, since FONTMAKER is a smart program it will add this for you.
Actually you can enter the file name anytime you like as long as it is
before PROCESSing the text. Now that every thing is as it should be, the
text looks good, the font is correct, you have entered a file name, it is
time to PROCESS it into a file SCULPT 3D can use. This is done by... Your
right! The PROCESS gadget. Just click on it and sit back and relax. If
you watch the Status Line and the screen, the computer will show you what
is going on. I know it's not much, but at least you know that it's still
working. ** A SPECIAL NOTE : The third thing it does to your text is called
lining. If your text requires more than the 4000 alloted lines
the status line will inform that an OUT OF LINE MEMORY ERROR has
occurred. If this happens, it means that your font was to complex, your
text too long, or both. To correct this, shorten your text or use a
smaller, simpler font. Shortly, the status line will say "SAVING FILE
XXXXX.SCENE" where XXXXX is the file name you entered previously. Then
the screen will restore its self, the status line will say "DONE." and
you will be ready to do another one, make a BANNER or QUIT.
Please note: the output of this program is a vector outline of the font.
The outline must be FILLed or EXTRUDEd or both to be of much use. If
you plan to EXTRUDE, it is best to do this before you FILL. This will
save tremendous amounts of memory and rendering time by not having
multiple hidden faces to calculate. When FILLing, some characters may
be impossible or extremely time consuming to fill; most notably,
characters that have a "loop" in them for example: O, D, P. I have that
if the loop is sealed off by faces created by hand to allow two non-
selected vertices, it will probably FILL. You should experiment with
this to see what works best.
BANNER was an after thought that was added because it required so little
additional programing. Really all that the BANNER does is frame your
text, then instead of vectorizing it, it sends it to the printer one
collum at a time. It isn't the best by far, but it works, and lets you
use all your available fonts. One nice feature is that you can make
multi line banners, or whatever else will fit on your printer. One
drawback is that the screen pixel ratio is very much different a printer
pixel ratio, this means that a height of 5 and width of 2 comes out
closest to the screen. I apologize for the crudity of this, but unless
the world beets a trail to my door, I see no pressing need to improve
this feature. (Thank my mom that its there at all, she wanted banners
for an anniversary, and it occurred to me that 98% of the work was
already done.) To use BANNER, set the text up the way you would like
it. Then click on the BANNER icon. After a brief pause, you will need
to supply some information in the status line. Printer width (usually
80), height multiplier (number of characters high per screen pixel),
width multiplier (number of characters wide per screen pixel), and
finally the character you want the banner printed with (a number sign
works best).
If there is enough positive response to this program, a second version
will be released that will have much better FILL and EXTRUDE routines
built in. The preliminary work has already been done. However,
somewhere you have to draw the line and release a program. If you go on
improving it forever, it never gets released. Also a much faster
processing routine has been proposed, but the current one was deemed
fast enough for release 1.0.
All I ask for is the merest pittance of money. A measly $25.00 for
commercial use, and a tiny $10.00 for private use. None registering
users and starving students (that's my category) at least send me a post
card so that I know my child is alive and well. Those of you kind
enough to pay for this program will be notified by postcard if a version
2.0 (or for that matter 3.0) is available.
One more thing: if you come up with any really great images or
animations, I would love to see them. If you send me a disk with COPIES
of anything done with Fontmaker, I will send your disk back with the
latest version) at no cost (registered users only).
I would like to thank my kind, intelligent brother: Alan, for coming up
with some of the better solutions. It was his idea in the first place.
Maybe he just wanted me to do all of his programing for him. I also
deeply thank him for writing this text file!
Thanks,
James Rice
123 La Paz st.
Anaheim, CA 92807
(714) 637-5428
Sculpt 3D is a registered trademark of Byte By Byte.
Fontmaker is copyrighted by James Rice