FontShow Copyright 1991 - Harvey J. Kaye FontShow - Font Viewing and Cataloging for Microsoft Windows FontShow Version 4.2a Release notes ============================================================================== Documentation is supplied in Word for Windows and Windows Write formats. FontShow.DOC - Word for Windows FontShow.WRI - Windows Write Installation: Copy the FontShow.EXE file to your hard drive, use the Program Manager File/New Function to add the file to your program manager screen. Copy the FontShow.ini to the Windows main directory. If you do not locate it there, FontShow will create one there. If you are upgrading from a previous release, do not replace your FontShow.ini with the supplied one or you will lose all your settings. To update an existing FontShow.INI, simply run settings and click on save settings to disk. Required files: VBRUN100.DLL and VBTOOLS.VBX. VBRUN100 is not included in this package, it is the visual basic runtime module. VBTOOLS.VBX is the Visual Basic Tools (VBTools) runtime module. Both these files should be placed in the Windows directory, or another directory early in the DOS Path. Place the files in the following locations: FontShow.EXE - in any directory FontShow.INI - in the Windows directory FontShow.TXS - in the Windows directory, can be altered on the settings screen. VBRUN100.DLL - in the Windows Directory or path (not supplied) VBTOOLS.VBX - in the Windows Directory or path. FontShow.DOC - in any directory (Word for Windows Doc file) FontShow.WRI - in any directory (Windows Write Doc file) FontShow.TXT - in any directory (this file) FontShow also requires Microsoft Windows Verions 3.0 or later. Known Problems: A font titled RSGriffonDingbats has been know to cause an Unrecoverable Application Error (UAE) when printing a sample page. Initial investigation point at Adobe Type Manager as the problem, but this has yet to be confirmed. FontShow is shareware, a registration fee of $15 is required if you continue to use this program after an initial evaluation period (not to exceed 30 days) If after 30 days you decide to continue using FontShow, please forward a cheque or money order totalling $15: Payable to: Harvey J. Kaye Address: 633 Bay Street, Suite 1701, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA, M5G 2G4 Please note that taxes, if any are required, are included in the above. U.S. Cheques and money orders are more than welcome, US Postage to Canada is 40 cents I believe. Please forward any comments, suggestions, problems etc. to the above address. I also monitor the RIME conference. Thank-you for trying FontShow!! =============================================================================== Version 4.2a Changes(maintenance release): ------------------------------------------ 1) Bug Fix: Users of ATM who had Helvetica as one of the last few font entries in their ATM.INI would receive an "Invalid Property Value" message, and FontShow would terminate. This has been fixed. 2) The Font Selected on the main screen, will become the default font when the save settings function is invoked. FontShow will bring up the default font (if it is still available) whenever FontShow is started or whenever the font list is rebuilt. 3) The maximum user text saved has been increased from 63 to 127 characters. Version 4.2 Changes: -------------------- 1) Print Function from the main screen has been enhanced to allow printing to the screen. Use the control menu to select the destination. Use Control - Clear Print Window to clear the screen. This function is intended to be used as a means of comparing fonts on the screen. Note that the print to screen function can only be so large, if it is larger than Windows will allow, a message will be displayed. Try reducing the point size. 2) Right Margin Offset setting has been changed to allow 100ths of inches (ie. 0.25"). 3) The pop up window for batch sample pages has been eliminated, the style selection is now made directly from the Catalog screen. 4) A bug has been reported in Publisher's PowerPak, that causes FontShow to pick up each PowerPak font 6 times. Code has been added to eliminate duplicate fonts, provided the duplicates are returned by Windows one right after another. The "nnn of xxx" display on the startup screen will decrement the "xxx" number for each duplicate found. This is a PowerPak bug. 5) When Publisher's Powerpak is used, it does not permit the use of the Show Character Circle, the text prints in black in a black circle. Another PowerPak restriction is the point size. Anything printed over 350 points will convert to Windows' SCRIPT font. Displaying the character will result in the bottom portion of the character to be truncated. (These problems will be reported to Atech, currently there is no workaround) Version 4.1 Changes: -------------------- 1) User Text and Point size for the main window will now be saved when Save Settings is executed. 2) Text Color and Save Settings are now on the Control pull down menu 3) New Option: Minimize on Print. If this option is selected on the settings screen, FontShow will minimize whenever print is selected. When printing is complete, the FontShow ICON will flash once per second. 4) New function "ATM Font Check", if enabled (from the Control menu) will check the ATM.INI file for the existence of true Normal, Bold, Italic, and BoldItalic styles. A new frame will be displayed if this option is enabled and will show a "green light" if the style is available, and red if not. Note this involves reading the ATM.INI file every time, so it does add a small amount of overhead. 5) Bug Fix: Paste Link is no longer enabled when FontShow is the application on the clipboard. An "Edit-Copy" followed by "Edit-PasteLink" would fail. (because Fontshow can't talk to itself) After the failure, FontShow would terminate. This has been corrected. 6) Print Function added to the main screen. Clicking on print will send the current text, font, size and bold/italic etc. attributes to the printer. Click again, same thing will happen (and if you've changed anything, it will pick up the new attributes) Don't expect it to word wrap, 'cause it won't. If you want to print wide text, try landscape mode if your printer supports it. Each click of print will print on a new line, click close print to send the text to the printer. If you print more than a page, a page eject will occur automatically. Click close print to send remaining text to the printer. 7) Several boxes and displays have changed. The point size and character selected on the main screen now display as part of the frame caption rather than taking up valuable space on the screen. (It's getting cramped!) 8) New settings options: Top border Width, Vertical Line Width, Horizontal line Width. These settings allow you to control the thickness in dots, of the sample page lines. In addition, they can be suppressed altogether by entering zero as the width. 9) New setting: Right Margin Offset allows an amount (in inches) which FontShow will add to the right margin (for lines and the show character only). (IE: Enter 0.3 and FontShow will add .3" to the right margin) This option has been requested by some users. Normally FontShow uses the margins as supplied by Windows, however this does not seem to be adequate for some printer drivers. 10) Other minor adjustments, and standardization of screens. Control menu expanded, save function moved from the settings screen to the control menu as well as Set Colors. Version 4.0 Changes: -------------------- 1) Full windows clipboard support, including Paste Link. 2) New opening screen 3) Additional font catalog style, will print the font using the fontname as the text, printing as many on the page as will fit. 4) Sample page display will now pop up a "More" button in the bottom left corner of the screen if the sample is more than a screen's worth long. Click the more button to display the rest of the sample. 5) Page numbers and Time/date removed from ANSI maps. Since the map doesn't change for a given font, the date/time info was extraneous. As well the page number is not really required since the map is usually only one page long. 6) Print margins adjusted slighly shorter, for those users of dot-matrix printers. 7) Text display colors can now be saved from the settings screen. 8) Main text display window can have the alignment altered from the default of centered. Options are Left, Center and right. 9) Additional information is displayed on the font metrics screen, as well as a diagram of what some of the numbers mean is displayed. 10) The startup screen may now be minimized during initialization, to allow background startup. 11) Some less frequently used functions have been moved to a menu bar on the main screen. 12) Full DDE support for Excel 3.0 and Word for Windows. The application must already be started, click on "Start Link", select the application desired. After the link is initialized, when you click "Send" the text displayed in the main window along with it's font, size, bold/italic etc will be sent to the application for which the link is active. Please note that for WinWord, the cursor must be in the text area, and for Excel, it must be in a cell. If this is not the case, the application will reject the request, and FontShow will display an error message. 13) The default character on the main window and the show character selected in the settings screen are now the same. 14) Miscellaneous fine tuning and screen layout changes. A new ICON is included if you update the item's property on the Program manager window you should see the new one. I still don't like it, any artistically inclined volunteers out there? 15) Bug correction: The font sample pages printed from the catalog function will now print the titles correctly. Version 3.1 Changes: -------------------- 1) The "show" character printing in a black circle has been made an option. See the settings screen. Should save on ribbons, toner and Ink. 2) Bug correction: The font inventory would print in the title font and size if page numbers, date AND time printing were turned off. 3) Bug correction: The settings for Page numbers, date and time printing were not being saved correctly. Version 3.0 Changes: -------------------- 1) A new sample style has been added (#5) that will print a variety of text text sizes and styles. 2) The Text sample function has been implemented for all styles. If the "Print Text Sample" option is selected on the settings screen, FontShow will open and read the filename that is entered in the "Text Sample Filename" box. Please see the supplied file "FontShow.TXS". Included in this file are instructions on how to alter the text that is displayed/printed from this file. There is a primitive "word-processing" function included, allowing you to alter the size, style, indentation, font, and letter spacing of the sample text, as well as allowing you to customize the text that is printed. 3) The option to override the sample characters printed in the font catalog is provided on the settings screen. 4) The font metrics screen has been updated to reflect the user selected text colours, and the print overlay bug on that screen has been corrected. 5) The ANSI map function has been changed to use the selected font for printing all output, rather than the title font. This speeds up printing dramatically. This function is overridden for any font known as a dingbat or symbol font. On the settings screen, there are 6 fields for "Dingbat" fonts. If the font selected for the ANSI map matches any of the characters in any of the Dingbat fields, that ANSI map will alternate from the title font to the selected font in the output. An example: 1- If the selected font is Helvetica, the entire map will be printed in Helvetica, because it does not contain Dingbat, Symbol, Carta etc. anywhere in the fontname. 2- If the selected font is BillsDingbats, the map will be printed with the title font for the ANSI codes and the sample character, and will print the sample character in BillsDingbats. This is because the fontname contains the characters string DINGBAT. (Got it?) 6) Several users have requested that the sample page and ANSI map functions be added to the font catalog function. This has been implemented. From the font catalog there are now 4 functions that will be performed on the selected fonts: 1) Print font inventory 2) Print font catalog 3) Print font samples 4) Print ANSI maps In option 3 you have the option of printing ANSI maps as well for all the selected fonts in one pass through the list. FontShow will estimate the time required (based on a 386-20) and give you the option to cancel the operation. 7) Titles and margins for printed and displayed output have been standardized to allow for three-hold punching etc. 8) The show character on the font samples now prints in white inside a solid black circle. This was done just for "style". This will be optional in future releases. This does, however, give you an idea of a font's character alignment and such, some fonts will print in slightly higher or lower position in the circle, which is scaled to the font's average height or width depending on which is greater. One exception is the CARTA font. The height of the Carta font is so large that it prints a circle over 4 inches in diameter. For this reason the circle is scaled back to the actual character size for the Carta font only. If this is required for any other unusual font, let me know. 9) Printing of the show character can be suppressed by setting its size on the settings screen to 0 10) The print buttons have been altered to a 3D picture of a printer, and the display buttons have been altered to a 3D picture of a screen. 11) Other minor visual changes. The startup screen now shows a stop sign, if you want to stop, click on the stop sign. ALT-S still performs that function. The color scheme has been standardized. Version 2.1 Changes: -------------------- 1) A new control has been added to the main menu, "Settings" This will allow the user to control the font and size for titles, and the character used on the sample page as the "Show" character. I call the large "A" in the upper right corner the "Show" character, for lack of a better name. If any of you think of a better name, let me know! For best print performance, pick a font that is resident in your printer for titles. (And be sure ATM uses them by clicking on the Use Resident or bitmap fonts option on the ATM control panel) In addition, control is provided over which font sizes are printed on the sample page. There is also a check box for "Text Sample" This is not yet implemented. It will, in a future release, print a sample of text printed with the selected font (a paragraph of text, including bold, italic, bolditalic and underline. The settings information is stored in file FontShow.INI which must be located in the Windows directory. You can update this file directly, however be careful as there is little validation code implemented yet and you may cause FontShow to crash! 2) Control is provided, also from the "Settings" screen, to adjust the screen colors. This version does not allow you to save the colors, just to change them. I have, however, toned down the colours a bit. (Stay tuned for the next version) 3) The sample page screen has been altered quite a bit, it now prints directly to the window, rather than a text box. This displays a little quicker and also will display more text when maximized, rather than having to re-display the sample. In addition, there is a new button "Display". Font sample 1 is selected as default, and in order to display the sample on screen, click on "Display". Print continues to operate as before. In addition, the frame that holds the controls "hides" when a screen display is requested. To bring it back, just click anywhere on the Sample window. You can re-hide it again if you want by clicking on the "Hide" Button. The title size is now adjusted from the settings screen, and the text of the title can be updated by clicking the "set title" button 4) FontShow now requests printer fonts instead of screen fonts. FontShow can not display some printer resident fonts. If you request display of a resident font you will receive a display error message. The font can still be printed and inventoried, you just can't display it on screen. That is a Windows and/or font manager restriction unfortunately. Future releases will allow user control over which fonts to retrieve. With font managers such as ATM or Facelift, the list is virtually identical. 5) A primitive print cancel function has been added to the font catalog. When a print is started, a cancel checkbox is visible in the status window. Click on that and FontShow will not generate any more output. However any output that has been sent to Windows must still be printed. I'm working on this one, but the Windows API calls in this area are trickier than I first thought. Bear with me on this one. 6) An other button has been added on the main window. "Display font metrics" click this button and FontShow will pop up a window displaying the metrics of the selected font. Infomation displayed includes, Average Width, Maximum Width, Character height, Internal Leading and so on. Not all the fields are fully implemented as documentation is sparse on that function, but it will improve in future releases. 7) Other miscellaneous bug and glitch fixes and "visual" adjustments. Bug Fixes: Many users reported an error message when printing "Invalid Property Value" was caused by my (incorrect) assumption that all users would have a font "Helvetica". This has been corrected, should the error occur FontShow will substitute the Windows font "Modern". However an even better solution is to update the Settings window with the preferred font which is used for titles and headers in all printed output. History: Version 1.0 Beta release Version 2.0 First public release Version 2.1 Second public release Version 3.0 Current as of Sept 2, 1991 Version 3.0a Current as of Sept 2, 1991 (corrected inventory and settings bug) Version 3.1 Current as of Sept 3, 1991 (added option for Show character print) Version 4.0 Current as of Sept 15, 1991 Version 4.1 Current as of Sept 21, 1991 Version 4.2 Current as of Sept 24, 1991 Version 4.2a Current as of Sept 27, 1991 (fix startup bug)