Documentation for BEARS.FON


1. What is BEARS.FON?

     BEARS.FON is a replacement System Font for Windows 3.1 or
above; it's sharper and easier to read.

     The Windows "System Font" is used for titlebars, menus, and
many dialog boxes.  The default System Font is mushy (note the
"a," "e," "r," and "t") and some combinations (e.g. ""vv~~ww"")
are hard to interpret.

     I call my font "BEARS" because it somewhat resembles the
Macintosh "CHICAGO" font (especially in the "V" and "W").

2. How to install BEARS.FON

     BEARS.FON requires Windows 3.1 or above; don't use it if
you still have Windows 3.0.

     Copy BEARS.FON to your Windows SYSTEM directory (usually
"C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM").  Then use SYSEDIT (or NOTEPAD) to
edit your SYSTEM.INI file.  In the [boot] section, replace
"fonts.fon=vgasys.fon" (for example) with "fonts.fon=bears.fon";
but remember the original setting (or save a backup of your
original SYSTEM.INI) -- in case bears.fon doesn't work on your
system.  Then restart Windows.

     (An alternative is to add a "SystemFont=bears.fon" line in
the [windows] section of your WIN.INI file.)

     You can't print with BEARS.FON; I'm not sure why, but it just
produces garbage.  You probably wouldn't want to print with it
anyway.  I've never wanted to print anything with the original
System Font.

     You may find that BEARS.FON is too small or too big for you.
This depends on your screen resolution and your preferences.
BEARS.FON is 17 pixels high; this is slightly bigger than the
default VGA System Font (VGASYS.FON -- which is 16 pixels high).

     You might want to use the Control Panel to install SYSTEM as
an ordinary font.  If you do, then dialog boxes that are supposed
to use the SYSTEM font will use this instead of BEARS.  You might
do this if these dialog boxes aren't the right size with BEARS.FON.

     If you ever want to remove BEARS.FON, just delete the file,
change SYSTEM.INI to what it was before, and restrart Windows.

3. How I produced BEARS.FON

     I was playing around with the font editor in Borland's Resource
Workshop, and I decided to see what the Mac font would look like
in Windows.  I called up Apple's RESEDIT program on my Macintosh
and examined the Mac CHICAGO System Font.  Then I manually copied
it, bit by bit, into Borland's Resource Workshop to create a Windows
font that I called CUBS.FON.

     CUBS.FON (15 pixels high) looked pretty cute in Windows -- and
sharper than the default Windows font.  But Apple designed the
CHICAGO font for the 342 x 512 resolution compact Mac screen;
it looked too small on my 480 x 640 VGA monitor.  And I didn't like
some of the Mac letters.  Besides, I probably couldn't legally
distribute CUBS.FON!

     So I thought I'd write my own System Font, borrowing from
Apple's CHICAGO and Microsoft's SYSTEM and many other fonts
(including some that I wrote for my LogiCola instructional logic
program that Prentice-Hall distributes).  BEARS.FON is the result.

     I hope you like BEARS.FON; if you don't, you might write your
own System Font -- it's not really that difficult.

     BEARS.FON is freeware.  If you use it, though, you are under
an obligation to cheer occasionally for the Chicago Bears.

                     Harry Gensler
                     Philosophy Department
                     Loyola University
                     6525 North Sheridan
                     Chicago, IL  60626