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___COP_v1.8____ =============== _____________________________________________________________________________ |Project| |Edit| |Preferences| |Guides| |Align to||Show | +-------+--++----+-------++-----------+--++------+------++--------++--------+ |ABOUT ||UNDO ||HIT RADIUS... ||GRID SPACE...||SELF... ||MEMORY | |NEW... ||CUT ||DRAG SPACE... ||ADD GUIDE ||GRID... ||EXAMPLES| |OPEN... ||COPY ||COLOR... ||DELETE GUIDES||GUIDE...||CLASSES | |SAVE ||PASTE || UPDATE TABLE|| GUIDES ||POINT...|+--------+ |SAVE AS...||REFRESH || SNAP || GRID |+--------+ | || FILL || CLOSE WB || FRAME | |QUIT ||ADJUST FRAME|| MK LINE END || MARK EDGES | +----------+|CENTER CHARS||EFACTOR... ||--BACKDROPS--| |CHAR WIDTH..||RFACTOR... ||LOAD CURRENT.| |GC ||UNDO LIMIT... ||LOAD COMMON..| |SYMMETRY ||CLIPBOARD... ||CLEAR COMMON | |SET ORIGIN ||LOAD... ||CLEAR CURRENT| +------------+|SAVE... ||CLEAR ALL | +--------------++-------------+ _____________________________________ _ _____________________________ |INFO ||_||TABLE | | ||X|| | | ||X|| | |___________________________________||X|| | ______________________________|X|| | COP |SKETCH PAD ||X|| | | ||X|| | ^ | ||-|| | 10 | || || | V | || || | | || || | ^ | || || | <11 > | || || | v | || || | ____ | || || | / \ | || || | | 12 | | || || | `-><-' | || || | ----- | || || | E|x | | || || | ----- | ||_|| | ----- | | | | R| x | | | ^ | | ----- | | | | | |____________________________| v |___________________________| ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ |1| |2| |3| |4| |5| |6| |7| |8| |9| Low Char: (12) High Char: (13) |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| Baseline: (14) Space: (15) Width: (16) Height: (17) Fig. 1: The NTSC screen layout. =============================== | || || | | || || | | ||_|| | | | | | | | ^ | | | | | | | |____________________________| v |___________________________| ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ |1| |2| |3| |4| |5| |6| Low Char: (12) High Char: (13) |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| |_| Baseline: (14) Space: (15) ___ ___ ___ Width: (15) Height: (17) |7| |8| |9| |_| |_| |_| Fig. 2: The lower part of the PAL screen layout. ================================================ INTRODUCTION COP stands for Curve Outline Painter, and is just that. It is a font editor that can edit font classes that are managed by the vFont library. You might even consider using the editor to edit standard amiga bitmap fonts or any other font format that is supported by the library. This document contains detail description of the various operation that can be performed in the editor. You should buy or lend a good book about vectorized fonts [REF 4] [REF 5] to learn about vectorized fonts and fonts in general and how to build characters to achieve the best results. Read the document entitled "UserManual" (Not finished yet) to learn about using the editor, and use this document as a dictionary when you have questions about specific operations in the editor. THE MENU COMMANDS COP has one menu strip, consisting of four menus, each consisting of six menu items (See figure one). These menus conform to the standard that is outlined by CBM [REF 1], which is: - Each menu item that has three trailing periods is an item that requires additional information, normally obtained by an additional requester. - Menu items with a few leading blanks may be toggled on and off. - Menu items with an ending Amiga letter plus one more character can be selected by typing the right Amiga key simultaneously with that particular character. COP will recognize the left Commodore (also known as the left Amiga) key in addition to the right Amiga key as a menu hot key. Project: These menus are all related to the editing session in large, such as loading and saving the edited font. All of these operations, except ABOUT, will make you lose the changes you have done to the current font class. You have to confirm these commands by answering a requester whenever you have done anything that you will lose. - ABOUT Not implemented. - NEW Create a new font class. A unique name will be requested for the new class. A non-unique name will result in yet another request for a name until a unique name is provided or the operation is aborted by choosing CANCEL in the requester. - OPEN Load a font class from a file. A font requester will prompt you for the name and the size of the desired font. The vFont library (and therefor COP) will recognize several different types of font formats on file. The only limitation is the number of xdf-libraries you have to support that various formats. The following formats are so far supported: * Standard Amiga Bitmap fonts. * Vectorized vFont fonts as loadseg file. * Vectorized vFont fonts as iff file. * Fontographer 2.0 - 3.0 PostScript fonts. Fonts will only be recognized if there is an associated FontContents header file for the font in the 'FONTS:' directory. These files have the file name extension '.font'. These files can be regenerated with the 'CheckFonts' utility that comes with the vFont distribution. - SAVE The current font class will be saved under that same name and other characteristics (type, author, size etc.) as it was loaded. The vFont library will ask you if it should overwrite an existing font if there is one. - SAVE AS This menu will allow you to alter specific data about the font class, such as name, author, storage format, style etc. You alter these parameters in a requester. - QUIT Terminate the session. Edit: These menus are generally editing operation that alters the font in one way or another. - UNDO Undo the last undo-able change. Changes are recorded so that you can undo all changes that you have done since the last time you saved the font or did another operation, found under the Project menu. - CUT This command will remove the selected data from the sketch pad and put it in the clipboard [REF 2] so that you can paste it back to the sketch pad or possible paste it into another application that supports the clipboard. You can copy or cut text, picture or vectors into the clipboard. Cutting a picture means that you put a copy of the picture of ALL lines in the current character in the clipboard. Cutting text means that the current character will be put in the clipboard. Cutting vectors means that all selected lines will be removed from the current character and put into the clipboard. - COPY This command works like CUT but it will not remove the selected data from the sketch pad. - PASTE PASTE will take the content of the clipboard and paste it into the sketch pad according to your clipboard preferences. Vectors, pictures and text can be pasted. The pasted vectors are automatically selected when pasted. Consecutive pasting of vectors will stack the vectors with a small offset from each other. Pasting text will only result in that the first character in the pasted text will become the current character. Pasting a picture is equivalent to loading a backdrop picture. - REFRESH Clear and redraw the whole screen, including the 256x2048 super bitmap table window (might be sloooooow). This is really an obsolete function and should be useless unless some other program is messing up the COP screen. - FILL This function will toggle the fill state of all the defined characters in the font class. The characters will all be filled or unfilled after this operation. - ADJUST FRAME The frame of a character defines the size and the baseline of a character. You can edit the frame by selecting this menu. Hit <Tab> to select the left, upper, lower, right, baseline or all sides of the frame. Use the arrow keys to move what you have selected. <Esc> will abort the operation and <Cr> will commit the operation. - CENTER CHARS This operation will calculate the size of the characters in the font class. You can select between fixed or proportional width for the characters. The operation will adjust the frame for all characters, the reference size for the font class and the font class flags to reflect that the font is a fix width or a proportional width font. - GC Garbage Collect. This menu is used for releasing memory that is kept but not presently used by the library. - SYMMETRY Use this menu when ever the characters in the table window looks distorted. It will improve the symmetry of small characters (sort of 'hinting'). - SET ORIGIN Use this menu when you want to move the origin in the sketch pad window. Use the arrow keys to move the origin, abort with <Esc> and commit with <Cr>. Preferences: This is the menus that you use to customize the behaviour of the editor according to your preferences. - HIT RADIUS This is a numeric value that specifies how far from a point or a line you can click and still hit that line or point. The selected points will have a circle that displays that radius. - DRAG SPACE A sequence of points will be generated if the left mouse button is pressed while moving the mouse in the sketch pad window. The maximal distance between these points is the DRAG SPACE. Changing this to a small value will result in almost continues lines, while a large value will result in a very rough line. - COLOR In case someone prefers some other colors then I do. Use this menu with caution, because I assume that some colors are lighter then others to achieve the 3d-effects. You can improve the 2.0x-look by increasing the contrast between the light and the dark color if you have good monitor. - UPDATE TABLE Setting the menu item will cause the character in the table window to be updated simultaneously as lines are moved in the sketch pad window with the mouse. This might be CPU-power intensive for complex characters, so you might not want to use this if you only have a 68000 machine. - SNAP Setting this menu item will cause all move and define operations to be aligned to the grid. - CLOSE WB This is a way to gain some chip memory by closing down the workbench screen. It will fail if there are windows on the workbench screen that were not opened by workbench. - MK LINE END Setting this menu item will remove the last visual point where the mouse pointer is, when defining lines. Some people prefer it to be like this (MK does ;-) and some don't (like me ;-). - EFACTOR Lines that have been bent can be adjusted by this operation. The EFACTOR is a numeric value from 1 to 256 that specifies how accurately the bent line should be drawn. A high value means that the line will be rough, while a small value means that the line will be smooth. Use this menu to set the default value. - RFACTOR This is the other way to adjust bent lines. It is also a numeric value from 1 to 256, and it specifies how much the bent line should follow the original un-bent lines. A high value means that the line will be as short as possible and a low value means that the line will follow the original line as much as possible. A value of 60-70 will turn a square into a perfect circle. Use this menu to set the default value. - UNDO LIMIT A lot of memory can be consumed by the undo buffer. Use this menu to limit the number of changes that are recorded. - CLIPBOARD Use this menu to customize your use of the clipboard such as selecting how the clip-data shall be represented in the clipboard. You can chose between the following IFF [REF 3] types: FTXT, COP or ILBM. FTXT is used for text, COP is my private IFF-type used for vectors and ILBM is used for pictures. The types under 'Accept' specifies what types should be accepted during a paste operation. The types under 'Produce' specifies the representations that will be generated during a copy or cut operation. The unit number specifies what 'slot' of the clipboard that should be used. Most programs uses the primary clip-unit, e.g. zero, so you might want to specify a different number so that COP will not interfere with other programs that also uses the clipboard. Some (most?) programs gets very confused when they finds something in the clipboard that is not a simple FTXT chunk. - LOAD Load preference settings from a text file. The Settings include all of the items under this menu, the defined guides, and the drag space. COP will automatically load the file 'COP.profile' when started. COP will look for this file in the current directory, in 's:' and in 'vfonts:' in that order. - SAVE Save preference settings as a text file. This file consists of readable text which you can create with a text editor if you want to. Lines that starts with a semicolon are treated as comments and will be skipped. The entries can be ordered in any way and may be missing. The name of the entries are case-dependent, so make sure that you spell the entries right. Guides: Guides are images that you can have in the background in the sketch pad. It is a great help when you try to make the characters symmetrical or when you want to give a font a special look by having some common shapes in the characters. - GRID SPACE The distance between the pixels in the grid. - ADD GUIDE Use this menu to add different type of guides (line, polygon train, ellipse, circle, square or rectangle) to the background of the sketch pad window. Select this menu and then type an 'l' to add a guide line, a 'p' to add a polygon train and so forth. The guides are created by clicking the left mouse button, moving the mouse, and then clicking the right mouse button. The operation can be aborted at any time by pressing 'escape'. A new guide type can always be selected, even after you have started to define a guide. - DELETE GUIDES Query delete some or all of the guides. Use the arrow keys to select a particular guide and type delete to remove it. Pressing 'escape' will abort the operation. The operation is ended when you move to the guide before the first one or after the last one, or when all guides are removed. - GUIDES Toggle the guides on or off. - GRID Toggle the grid on or off. - FRAME Toggle the frame on or off. - MARK EDGES Selecting this menu item will cause the original points in all bent lines to be marked with crosses. This will make it easier to aim when selecting those points. - BACKDROPS This is just a delimiter. The menus below this delimiter all have to do with backdrops which are pictures that are displayed in the background of the sketch pad. Only one bit plane (single color) pictures are displayed. Picture that have more colors or which are larger then the sketch pad will be truncated in depth, width or height. - LOAD COMMON Use this menu to load a backdrop picture that will be used as the background for all characters that don't have a specific backdrop picture associated to it. - LOAD CURRENT Use this menu to associate a backdrop picture to the current character. - CLEAR COMMON Drop the common backdrop. - CLEAR CURRENT Drop the backdrop of the current character. - CLEAR ALL Drop all loaded backdrops. Align to: Use these menus to move selected points in the current character according to the chosen menu. Each menu will prompt you for a direction in which the points should be moved. You can chose between horizontal, vertical or both. - SELF Move the selected points towards each other in the selected direction. - GRID Move all points so that they coincides in the selected direction with the grid. - GUIDE Not implemented yet. Should align the selected points to some or all of the defined guides. - LINE Move the selected points towards a line that you specifies by pressing, dragging and releasing the left mouse button. Show: These menus displays some information. - SHOW MEMORY LEFT Show how much memory is available. Consider closing the workbench screen if you will run out of chip memory. - SHOW EXAMPLES Use the current font class to display a file of your choice. Pressing escape or clicking the close gadget of the window ends this operation. Typing any other character will display another page of the chosen file. Cop will do this by invoking the "vMore" program which means that you have to have a path to that program. - LIST CLASSES List the currently loaded font classes and font instances. USING THE TABLE WINDOW The purpose of the table window is to provide a way to pick new characters to edit and to display the designed characters. A new character may be selected either by pressing a key when the table window is active or by selecting with the mouse. Selecting a character with the keyboard will center that character in the window. Some of the characters in the table will have a blank spot. Those are the characters that are defined in the class. Undefined characters will be rendered as specified in the 'undef' font class. USING THE SKETCH PAD WINDOW Selecting: The leftmost tool gadget has to be unselected (gadget one in the figures) before you can select anything. Both lines and points can be selected with the mouse. A point is selected if you are inside the HIT SPACE radius from that point, and a line is selected if you are less then HIT SPACE from it. Pressing the 'control'-key simultaneously when selecting a point or a line will select that entire polygon train. You can frame points and lines by pressing the left mouse button while the mouse pointer are not pointing at anything, and then dragging the mouse pointer. You will then get a frame, which you can re-size by moving the mouse. Everything inside the frame will be selected when you release the mouse button again. Any previous selection will stay selected either if you select something that is already selected or by pressing a 'shift'-key. Any previous selection will be unselected otherwise. Pressing the 'shift'-key will also cause points and lines that you aimed at which were selected to be unselected and vice versa. Defining: The leftmost tool gadget has to be selected before you can define new polygon trains. You will have a hair cross instead of the mouse pointer when you are inside the sketch window when that gadget is selected. A new polygon train is started by pressing and releasing the left mouse button. Clicking the left mouse button will add new points/lines to the polygon train. Moving the mouse while you still are pressing left mouse button will generate points when you exceed the DRAG SPACE distance. Pressing the right mouse button will end the polygon train. Pressing 'delete' while adding new points to a polygon train will remove the last point. Deleting the first point in the polygon train will abort the operation. You will automatically continue on old lines if your first or last point coincides with an end point of any line in the current character. Deleting: Pressing 'delete' or clicking the skull button below the sketch window will remove the lines and points that were selected. Moving: Any points and lines can be moved by pressing the left mouse button and moving the mouse simultaneously. Only selected points/lines will be moved. A useful method is to frame select a bunch of lines and then grab one of the selecting points and then drag it somewhere. USING THE MAIN WINDOW TOOLS Please refer to the figure for the numbering of the gadgets. The gadgets are placed slightly different on the screen on a NTSC Amiga then on PAL Amiga due to the different screen heights. The define gadget (#1) can be toggled. Lines can be added to the sketch pad when the button is selected, and lines can be picked and moved while that button is unselected. The select-all gadget (#2) is used to select every line that is defined in the current character (see USING THE TABLE WINDOW). A subsequent command after pressing this button might be to erase or move every line in the current character. The bend gadget (#3) is used to bend or unbend lines. One or many lines or points have to be selected before this button is pressed. The lines that were selected will become bent if they were not bent before and vice versa. The fill gadget (#4) is used to make the current character filled or non-filled. Intersecting lines will generate a cookie-cut look. The widen gadget (#5) is used to make selected lines thick or thin. The selected lines will become thin if they were thick before and vice versa. The tie gadget (#6) is used to link two end points together. Precisely two end points have to be selected before this button is pressed. The cut gadget (#7) is used to cut points and lines. Selected lines will be cut and any points that were not a part of line will be cut and made into two different points. The reproduce gadget (#8) is used to reproduce points (intuitive image ehh!? ;-). Selected lines will have an extra point after this operation. The kill gadget (#9) is used to delete points and lines, just like the delete key. The re-size gadgets (#10) are used to enlarge or shrink selected lines. You will scale the selected lines more if you press a shift-key simultaneously while you press one of the buttons. The move gadgets (#11) are used to move selected lines in one of four directions. Pressing a shift-key will move the lines the distance specified by GRID SPACE. An alternative to using these gadgets is to use the arrow keys on your keyboard. The rotate gadgets (#12) are used for rotating the selected lines. Pressing a shift-key simultaneously will rotate the lines 90 degrees. The Low Char gadget (#13) are used to set the ascii value of lowest character that are defined in the font class. Characters with a lower ascii value then this value will have the 'undef.class' look. The High Char gadget (#14) are used to set the ascii value of the highest character that are defined in the font class. Character with a higher ascii value then this will have the 'undef.vfont' look. The Baseline gadget (#15) are used to set the baseline of the font. The Width gadget (#16) are used to set the reference width for the font. The library will use this width when it is scaling a font to become a certain width, e.g. this means that library will half the width of a font if the desired font is half of this reference width regardless of the actual width of the characters in the class. Setting a width that is larger then the actual width of the character will have the result of shrinking the character, and setting a too small value will expand all characters. The Height gadget (#17) are used in the same way as the Width gadget. REFERENCES [REF 1] "Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual: Libraries & Devices, Revised & Updated." COMMODORE-AMIGA, INCORPORATED. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 0-201-18187-8. [REF 2] "Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual: Libraries & Devices, Revised & Updated." Chapter 32, pp 627-635. COMMODORE-AMIGA, INCORPORATED. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 0-201-18187-8. [REF 3] "AMIGA ROM Kernal Reference Manual: Exec." Appendix B-29. "EA IFF 85" Standard for Interchange Format Files." Commodore Business Machines, Inc. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 0-201-11099-7. [REF 4] "TeX and METAFONT New Directions in Typesetting" Donald E.Knuth, Digital Press & American Mathematical Society. ISBN 0-932376-02-9 [REF 5] "Adobe type 1 font format" Adobe System Incorporated, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN 0-201-57044-0