Macintosh Fonts (Neat Stuff)

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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: Macintosh Fonts (Neat Stuff)
Message-ID:
Date: Fri, 27-Jul-84 01:41:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.1274
Posted: Fri Jul 27 01:41:41 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Jul-84 02:53:23 EDT
Sender: daemon@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
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From: [email protected]
Thanks to everybody that responded to my questions about how to do font
transfers between different files and the font-editor. I got all (most)
of my problems solved and now am a fair 'expert' on the fonts for the mac..

I will explain what was involved latter in this msg...

In messing around with the fonts I found something that could lead to
som SERIOUS problems to anyone wanting to use a lot of different fonts
for different things...
The first problem is that I could NOT get a font with a 'FONT-NUMBER'
of 384 thru 511 to work, These are the 'user font numbers' as stated
in INSIDE MAC, Font Manager Page 24, But I was able to use anything
in the 64-128 range very easily..

The serious problem is that unless someone tries to coordinate this mess,
everyone that does their own fancy font will choose the EXACT SAME NUMBER
(See Murphy's Laws for proof)... And the probability goes up with complexity
and usefulness of the particular font..

The problem I had with not being able to copy the different fonts back and
forth was this exact problem, the person who created them, gave them all the
SAME font number, which happend to be the same number as Los Angeles (12)..

The place where this is really going to goof up is that several people have
already requested the fonts that I had mentioned before and some were going
to try and send me some fonts that they had. Now if the ones they have
and the ones I have both have the same number, we both have to go into
RMOVER (Resource Mover) and change the numbers around. Now since there
area a bunch of fonts out there already, I will be doing this with all
of the fonts that get sent to me, and then re-distributing them with all
different numbers.

I propose that someone (I will voluntere) try to keep track of assigning
numbers to different types of fonts. i.e. MUSIC gets number XX and
ELVISH type fonts gets number YY, an number range X-Z for font type Q
since it is such a popular font, etc... Even though this will
NOT solve all of the problems, it will attempt to make a little sense out
of the disaster and we will have a little bit of standards to go by..

If anybody has any comments pro or con (especially some from apple
or somebody close to apple or anybody that knows what, if anything
apple is trying to about this problem.) please let me know..

Now for what I am doing..

I have been interested in messing with fonts for aprox 7 years, and have
had the NBS fonts on my computer for most of that time, even though I never
did much with them... I did get them displayed on my graphics screen...
I am now also interested in putting such charcter sets as Japanse Katkana (sp)
and Korean onto the mac. My mother-in-law is Japanese, and she is going
to help with that part of it.. I also have a friend who is interested
in getting Hebrew onto the mac..
I am also the local Macintosh group coordinator and librarian, so I also
want to have all of the fonts for the who ever wants to get access to them.
(I am also going try to go to the NYC Mac Users Group)

So I am also volunteering to try to keep all of the available fonts together
in one place so that people wont have to re-invent the wheel every time
they want a different font, espcially the hard to do fonts such as the
oriental fonts and hebrew (PS: I already have a decent hebrew on a different
system that I will be attempting to convert over sometime in the next few
months)


Now for the problems and soulutions to the font mess...

the problems I were having made the font-mover seem like it didnt work

I would create a FONTS file using the font-mover, since it only understood
files that it created, and then I would go into the font-editor and
INSTALL a font into the font file... so far so good...
Then I would move it to the system file, because I was going to
later move it to a DIFFERENT font file on a different disk...
that also worked MOST of the time.
But when I moved more than one file at a time into the FONTS file
using the font-editor, only the last one was ever around, this is
why I thought it didnt work...
SOOOOO
what you have to do, is after EACH time you move a file into the
font file, is go into RMOVER and make sure the font number is something
DIFFERENT from the rest of the numbers in the list!!! and then
you have to calculate a new number using the formula

font-number * 9 for the resource that has the name

and

font-number * 9 + point-size fort the resource that has the data

THEN AND ONLY THEN can you move it into the system file, or where ever
else you want to put it...

Now If you have ever gone back and forth between these different programs
even a half dozen times in one sitting, you will understand my concerns about
trying to coordinate the font numbers...

Anybody with comments, (Pro or Con) PLEASE send them to me, and will
summerize back to the net...

For the people that want the fonts that I already have, I will be getting a
bunch more withing the next month, and when I have a fairly full disk,
I will send them to anyone that sends me either

money for a disk and postage ($7)
a blank disk and postage
or prefereably a disk with your fonts on it. (plus postage)

Postage should be under $2 including a decent mailer.. Anybody seen
any 3 1/2" disk mailers yet???, if not, I will use 5" mailers...

I expect this disk to be quite full by the time I get it sent out since
I alread have approx 200K worth of font stuff..

If anybody knows how and wants to upload this stuff to the net, send me
a msg. I am not to sure how to do it since I am on a DEC-20 and not
a UNIX VAX... (text files, I can do, but not binary)

Remember, if you send a disk or money, it will be ATLEAST 2 weeks before
I get all of the files that I currently know about, so it will be at around
a month before I get them in the mail...

If you have a pressing need for a specific font, send me E-mail, and
I will try and help you quicker..

Keith Sproul
[email protected]

Keith Sproul
698 Magnolia Road
North Brunswick, NJ 08902

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