#Font Fixing ?
10 messages in this thread
My hard drive fonts directory has grown to humongous size (regular fonts,
Zuma fonts, Whap! fonts, Bridgeboard fonts, etc.) I notice that VideoTitler
seems to take forever to load the font tables. I notice that 1.3 has a new
command FIXFONTS. Since I have simply added fonts here and there over time,
should I use FIXFONTS ? I tried running the program by just clicking on the
ICON within the extras disk(which was in df2:). Nothing seemed to happen,
and my hard drive light did not go on. How do I know if the program is
working. Oh, just exactly what does FIXFONTS do anyway ??
Look on page 1-7 of the Enhancer manual. FixFonts goes thru the
subdirectories in fonts: and makes sure that the .font files
accurately reflect which fonts acctualy exist in the
subdirectories.
FixFonts is a utility to correct your .font files to reflect the actual
size fonts you have in that directory. You see all your .font files
contain a list of available sizes in the file, part of the Amiga Font
Standard says that you can read what fonts are available from that file and
expect all the listed sizes to be in the correct directory. Since many
people delete or add some sizes to a font the list in your .font file may
not be correct. Now you may not have noticed a problem with some software
because developers quickly figured out that those .font files didn't
correctly reflect the font sizes you actually have, so they stray from the
standard by actually reading the directory to determine what sizes are
really there. However some programs (NotePad I believe) still assume that
all the sizes listed in the font file will be in the directory. When you
execute FixFonts it goes through all your fonts in the current Fonts:
directory, reads the sizes for each font and corrects the associated .font
file to correctly reflect the sizes you actually have. All this, and more
information that you could possible ever want to know about fonts is
available in the docs & errata for the Caligrapher font editor.
FixFonts can repair the Font Header (the xxx.font) file so that it contains
the correct number, size, etc. of fonts that are actually in the directory
under that name. It cannot reduce the size of the fonts directory.
Have you investigated REN? I think it is in the ARTS LIB14. It lets you
put the path to a font in its font header, and your WorkBench needs to have
only the short font header file, while the much larger font definition file
can be on any disk. When you call for one of the fonts, the header will be
read, and you will be prompted to insert the disk that contains that font.
It looks like FIXFONTS is not the solution to my problem. Since the
problem is just that the FONTS: directory on my hard drive has grown beyond
all reason, I'm not sure I understand what benefit I would gain from REN,
could you explain ?
Perhaps the best solution I can think of right now is to start a
process of listing all the fonts I use in each program, and then comparing
that to all the fonts I have in FONTS: . I certainly know that I do not use
most of the original Workbench fonts. After I have decided what fonts I
choose not to keep, I should delete those fonts (or font sizes) to reduce
the overall size of the directory. After that culling process is complete,
perhaps I should use FIXFONTS to ensure each .font file accurately reflects
the sizes of that font which I have retained. Does that sound right ?
Again, the only problem I have is the approximately 30 seconds it
takes Videotitler to load the Font tables. That seemed like a long time so
I assume I have a problem. Since I now want to add the new fonts found on
the 1.3 Extras disk (all right, all right, all right maybe I want to add
LOTS of new fonts) I assumed I had better start correcting the time delay
in loading the fonts table.
There's no hard and fast rule about having to have all your fonts in one
directory. You can ASSIGN FONTS: anywhere you like, assigning it to different
places as needed, perhaps with script files.
Bill, one thing that you could do is have multiple FONT directories.. Say,
one directory for each program that you use fonts in… before running a
program simply ASSIGN FONTS: <font_directory_you_want_to_use> . I do
something similar except with floppies (I don't have a hard disk yet 🙁 ).
REN lets you have Fonts: assigned to a directory that contains nothing
except the small xxxx.font (font header) files. These are nearly always
quite short (about 256 bytes for each font style/size), and can be read
rather quickly. REN puts the complete path to the actual font data into the
font header so that, when you select a font, you will be prompted for the
disk on which the data is stored. If it is a directory on a hard disk, the
path could just be followed to locate the data.
Having the headers in a separate directory from the data should speed up
the reading considerably – about 2-3 times as fast would be my not overly
educated guess. I've used this method to store 40 or more fonts on a
crowded WB disk, but with the bit data files on other disks. The biggest
problem comes when you forget and use this Fonts: directory with something
like DPaint that refuses to handle more than 20 fonts.
I like REN and have found it extremely useful. You could do the same thing
with a disk or file editor, but it is much harder to type over every single
file. REN does it automatically.
1st You can never have too many fonts! 🙂
2nd There are quite a few people who wish they had your problem of
having a nice handy harddrive where you can store fonts till your hearts
content and conplain about how long it takes to read the directory. Here
is what I suggest you do (it works well for me): Create a few
subdirectories in your Harddrives fonts dir. I suggest you make mayabe
'Video' 'Printer' and 'System' dirs or 'Large' and 'Small' ,whatever, then
move all the .font files and coresponding dirs into the heading under which
it fits.
Then you add a line in your startup-sequence Assign Fonts:
sys:fonts/System, this will make your default fonts whichever ones you put
in the fonts/system dir. Now before you use an application which uses
large display fonts like VideoTitler change your font assignment to
fonts/Video, or before you run a DeskTop Publishing package or graphic
wordprocessor you change your font assignment to Fonts/Printer.
If you change fonts often you might want to create a set of script files to
change the fonts: assignment for you, set their S protection bit high, and
put them in your C: dir. Then you can just type Video and your fonts will
be assigned to video, of course you could also use Alias, or if you use
Workbench you could attach Icons to the script files using IconX.
"1st You can never have too many fonts." … Jason, I like your style.
Actually, I also liked your idea of breaking the FONTS: directory into
subdirectories for several different programs. Probably my biggest
conflicts are between Pagesetter and Videotitler, but I tend to use bigger
fonts with Videotitler and smaller ones with Pagesetter.
Thus, the big/small subdirectory shows promise. If I try the assignment
with XICON (or ICONX, or whatever) I should be able to get the font
assignements and stillMtick with icons which makes the HD much easier to
work with. I'm going to switch over to 1.3 later this month, I think I'll
try this idea and see how it works. Thanks.
P.S. I still think I'll get rid of some of those awful looking fonts from
1.2 (Garnet and Emerald come to mind).