Club Amiga de Montreal - CAM/CAM_CD_1.iso/files/360b.lha/showfont_v4.1/ShowFont.doc

Text File | 1990-01-28 | 15KB | 329 lines

ShowFont 4.1 © 1989, 1990 by Arthur Johnson Jr.
===============================================
Last update date - 01/17/90
---------------------------

**************************************************************
* To see just the changes since revision ?.?, check out the  *
* improved "Revisions n' Updates" section at the end of this *
* documentation!                                             *
**************************************************************

-----------------------------------------------------------------
- All files in this archive are Copyright 1989, 1990 by myself. -
- I lost the icon supplied by AmigoTimes, but ShowFont will     -
- work from the Workbench if a suitable icon is created.  This  -
- program may be freely distributed for NON-PROFIT purposes     -
- ONLY.  It may NOT appear as a part of any commercial product  -
- without my expressed permission - this goes for EACH new      -
- version that comes out.  Sorry, but I like to keep track of   -
- my program...  I guess that's enough legalese for now.        -
-----------------------------------------------------------------

ShowFont
--------

     This program allows you to quickly and painlessly view all
256 characters in a typical font.  I wrote it because using
FontEd or (choke!) NotePad to see what a font looks like can be
slow, tedious, monotonous, etc.

     To call this program from the Workbench, double-click on its
icon.

     To run it from the CLI, type:

     ShowFont [font_name] [font_size] [font_style] <RETURN>

     [font_name] (Topaz, Ruby, etc.), [font_size] (8, 12, etc.),
and  [font_style] (Underlined, Bold, Italics, Extended - use the
first letters) are purely optional.  If you do not specify a
size, ShowFont will check all your available fonts and then show
you what sizes/styles of the font you wanted exist.  If you don't
give a style, ShowFont will try to find the "normal" style of the
font size you want.  If you omitted the font, you can select what
font/size/style to see by using the font requester.

The Font Requester
------------------

     So, what's the font selector like?  Well, I've tried to make
it pretty standard, including all the neat features most of the
better ones have.  To select a font, size, or style, simply click
on it with the left button.  When you have the desired font,
size, and style selected, press the OK button.  You can also just
double-click on the font, size, or style to do the same thing.
     To scroll around the font, size, and style lists, click on
the arrows or slider gadgets.  Since you've most likely used
their like in other programs, you probably already know what they
do.  Note that you can hold down the left button over these
gadgets and the list will scroll rapidly in the direction of the
arrow you're over.  You can also do this with the slider gadget
and move up and down to scroll over the whole list.  To stop the
scrolling, release the button.
     If you decide you really don't want to look at a different
font than what you had been checking out, press the CANCEL
button.

/***************************************************************/
/* Because most everyone changes their "Preferences," the      */
/* colors I mention below might not be correct for your        */
/* machine.  Just translate what the colors should be on your  */
/* system (if you've changed them).  The original colors were  */
/* blue, white, black, and orange (in order of how you can     */
/* change them in Preferences).  Just look to see what your    */
/* colors are where and things should be pretty easy to        */
/* understand. Then again, they may not.                       */
/***************************************************************/

     If the sizes of the font you've selected are printed in
WHITE, the font is non-proportional (TOPAZ).  If they are printed
in ORANGE, they are proportional (most everything else).  I added
this so you can easily see what fonts you may have are
non-proportional, since they are real nice when trying to make
tables and stuff that needs to be organized in columns.  If you
don't understand what I'm talking about, non-proportional fonts
take up the same number of pixels per character, i.e., an 'i'
takes as much space as an 'm'.  Proportional fonts space the
characters according to how wide they are, i.e., an 'i' would
definitely take less space to write than an 'm'.  Don't know what
a pixel is?  Pixels are the small dots that can be seen if you
press your face to your terminal screen.  What's a terminal
screen?  Well, etc., etc.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The above explanation is a perfectly good RECURSIVE DEFINITION
example.  But anyway, back to the documentation.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

     Note that if you are in 2 color mode, the proportional and
non-proportional size colors will be the same.

     Clicking CANCEL when you've just booted the program without
any default font will cause the program to display TOPAZ 11 (if
it exists).  I don't know why it doesn't use TOPAZ 8.  I've tried
to tell it to many times and in many ways, but it ignores me.
C'est la vie.  But you would never do that anyway, would you?
Someday, I'll try to track down and eliminate this one-time
fault.  Version 4.0 note: I will soon call this a "feature"
instead of a bug...  Version 4.1: looks like a feature...

Menus
-----

     For a change, I think I will try to organize this
documentation a bit by listing all the menus and what each
selection does. If this is too orderly for you, please call and
tell me and I'll try to make it more confusing next time.

Menu    - Option              What is it?
---------------------------   -----------
Project - About               Gives some useless information
                              about the program.
Project - Quit                Exits the program.

Fonts   - Change FONTS dir:   To redefine the current FONTS:
                              directory.

 If you have the 'arp.library' (probably some Copyrights and
trademarks associated with the name, I hope I don't offend anyone
- I promise I'll send in the registration [someday...]),
ShowFont will automagically bring up the nice ARP file requester.
Just find and click on the name of the directory you want FONTS:
redefined to (and click OK, or CANCEL if you change your mind).
You can also select a font name, but so far (4.1), it won't show
that font right off, but will instead read all the fonts.  I'll
add that option in a more thoughtful release.

 If you don't have 'arp.library' (obligatory "Why not?"), you'll
get my nastily spartan requester.  Just type in where ShowFont
can find the new FONTS: directory.
 Examples:  df1:fonts1
            dh0:fonts/myfonts
 After you've pressed RETURN, click OK to accept the new FONTS:
directory, or Cancel to leave without altering anything.

Fonts   - Font Selection      Brings up the font selecting
                              requester.

Screen  - Screen Format       To change the screen size and
                              number o' colors.

     Notice that all the menu options have short key-equivalents,
i.e., you can press Right Amiga-? to select that menu selection,
where ? is whatever letter is displayed after the neat Amiga
symbol in the menu.

     If the font is found, ShowFont will display
"font_name-font_sizefont_style" in the upper left-hand corner of
the screen next to the CLOSE gadget.  To see the rest of the font
(if all 256 characters cannot fit on the screen at once), use the
three gadgets on the right-hand side of the screen.  Again, their
function closely resembles their appearance.  Fiddle around for
about five seconds and you will be quite familiar and comfortable
with moving around a font. Again, you can just hold down the
button and scroll happily in whatever direction you like.

     The font_style symbols are 'u', 'b', 'i', 'e', for
underlined, bold, italics, and extended, in that order.  "Normal"
styles won't have anything after the size number.

     Note that actually all 256 characters will not be displayed
if there are blank (empty) characters.  The program will skip
them, since they are rather uninteresting, being blank.  The
program will display that segment of the characters that the font
says should be displayed.  Two-to-one someone has some neat
secret graphics just outside the official display range, but
we'll never know.

    I've added the ability to find out just how to get that neat
graphics character you see.  Just click on the character, and the
keys to press to produce it will appear in the window title area,
also, its decimal and hex codes.  The alphabetic keys (A -> Z)
will all be in upper-case.  That does NOT mean you have to (for
example), press ALT-SHIFT-A when you see 'ALT-A'.  Just press the
ALT and then the A keys.  Only press SHIFT when it explicitly
tells you to.  The lowercase 's' and 'm' you might see refer to
the SPACE BAR and KEYPAD MINUS (-), respectively (not sexual
practices - whoops!).

* NOTE * Anything telling you to press CONTROL-[ALT-]_ is
suspicious, as I did not have a table for the characters from
decimal 0 -> 31, and 128 -> 159.  Take the "press..." advice with
a grain o' salt for these characters.  If some kind soul will
send me a complete keymap with those values noted, I will add
them.  Note that CONTROL-? or CONTROL-ALT-? means that ShowFont
THINKS you press CONTROL (or CONTROL-ALT) to get that character,
but does not know what particular key.  Sorry.  Someday I'll get
this fixed up.

     It's come to my attention that for some fonts, what ShowFont
tells you to type to get a certain character is completely wrong.
I think this may be because the programs using these fonts change
the default keymap.  I'm not really sure about this, anyone
having this sort of problem please alert me about it.

Escaping
--------

     To exit the program, click on the CLOSE gadget or select the
menu "Quit" option or press Right-Amiga-Q.  I like three ways to
end a program!  Actually, you can also end the program by:
     1) Control Amiga-Amiga
     2) Turning off your computer's power
     3) Striking the system with great force with a large, blunt
        object
That now makes a total of six ways to terminate the program.  I'm
sure clever people will find even more imaginative and useful
ways to end the font session.

Summary?
--------

     I guess the best advice I can give you for using and
understanding this program is to type 'showfont' from CLI and
fiddle around for a while until you either comprehend all the
features or delete the program in a fit o' passion.  In fact,
most bugs are detected this way through random menu and gadget
selecting.

     I'll apologize now for this rather random and odd
documentation file, but I'm usually dazed and confused after my
program successfully runs without any apparent bugs.  On a
technical note, the Lattice 5.4 C "big" compiler and global
optimizer compiled this program without comment.  I like that.
The 'make' script and .lnk file are also included for the heck o'
it.

Thank You's
-----------

     National Type Foundry, for sending me two font packages.
     AmigoTimes, for the complimentary magazine issue (& icon).
     J. K. Levie, for his instructional 'defdisk.c' source.
     Commodore Magazine, for giving ShowFont an Honorable Mention
      in '89.
     AmigaWorld for the February 1990 "Top 20" mention.  Yeah!

     ...and anyone else who deserves it, especially you users of
ShowFont!

How to Locate the Author
------------------------

     Any comments/questions/suggestions/flames/improvements/etc.,
can be directed to the following address:

******************************
* Arthur Johnson Jr.         *
* 225 Montego Bay Court      *
* Merritt Island, FL  32953  *
* [phone]             *
******************************
...or any of the following electronic addresses:

Arthur Johnson Jr. -=> {uiucuxc, hoptoad,
petsd}!peora!rtmvax!bilver!alj
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  -=> [e-mail]
                   -=> PLink: DUNG
                   -=> GEnie: A.JOHNSONJR

     I don't frequent the message bases on PLink or GEnie, so
E-MAIL me on those two systems.

Revisions n' Updates
--------------------

Version 4.1 : If it encounters a character it can't print,
               ShowFont now simply skips it and continues instead
               of aborting the whole program.
              Included the ARP file/directory requester to help
               simplify changing FONTS:

Version 4.0 : Added an error requester to inform you of certain
               recoverable errors instead of exiting the program
               disgracefully.
              Told ShowFont how to handle font sizes with
               multiple styles nicely.
              Included the ability to change the FONTS: dir from
               inside ShowFont.  Currently, when you leave the
               program, FONTS: will still be pointing to wherever
               you told ShowFont to look for it.
              Now you can change the number of colors the screen
               has, for color font support sometime in the
               future.  And, two-color screens really haul when
               scrolling around!
              Moved the "To get that key..." information to the
               title bar, and included the key codes for my own
               obscure purposes.

Version 3.3 : Fixed a bug that caused ShowFont to lump
               similarly-named fonts together (whoopsie!).
              Added "To get that character, press..." feature.

Version 3.2 : Eliminated slider gadgets happy post-release
               flickering.
              Returned a satisfactory response to the system when
               exiting from a RUN-ned ShowFont, exterminating
               that error message.
              Polished the code up quite a lot for some
               noticeable speed and size improvements.
              Worked on the documentation some more (this will be
               assumed for all future versions) ;)
              Discarded the somewhat useless and potentially
               dangerous "Read FONTS:" menu option.
              A few other little thingies.

Version 3.1 : Fixed a bug in the 'Read FONTS:' menu selection.
              Added "double-clicking" selection method.
              Cleaned up the documentation a bit.

Version 3.0 and below : These records were destroyed in the great
                         fire, earthquake, plague, hurricane,
                         tsunami, volcanic eruption, insect
                         infestation, computer virus, meteorite
                         strike, supernova, tornado, alien
                         attack, flood, n' monsoon of 1988.  I
                         apologize for any inconvenience this may
                         cause.