#Foreign chars in T3.0
29 messages in this thread
Help! Some of you must have encountered this same problem. None of
the dozens of fonts that come with Toaster 3.0 software support the
full ASCII set of characters! You can't even spell Pina Collada
correctly with it! I thought NewTek had an international market, or
were, at least, servicing the full US/Canada market. I need those
foreign characters. Do any of you have any ideas where I can pick up
(preferably download) some PostScripts fonts that have it all and
make them compatible with the Toaster 4000 CG?
The FontBank typefaces bundled with the Video Toaster don't have
international character sets. However, we are preparing a new version
that does have these characters. It will be released on December 1.
Probably cost about $ 25 for the expanded set.
B&P Graphics, whose fonts are also bundled with Video Toaster,
should have all the international characters. They also have a CD-ROM
of 1,000 fonts for $499 (I think).
Disclaimer: I'm the President of FontBank, Inc. <G>
How about a mono-spaced courier font with '>' & '|' charachters?
(It's amazing how few of the fonts actually support _any_ extended
characters.)
I can't belive how funky the fonts supplied with the T4000 are! I
ended up having to use DPaint to get a simple mono-spaced courier
font. (Boy that really impresses the clients, let me tell you! :^)
Funky accented characters are handled by by 'dead-keys'. These are
special alt-key combos which don't print, but alter the next key. for
a Piqa Colada with a ctrsuvl q, press alt-j then n. Your n will
arrive with a tilde riding on it. This works with alot of CG fonts.
The dead keys are alt + f,g,h,j, and k. These will give different
accents: alt-f ==> a (accent acute?) alt-g ==> ` (accent grave?)
alt-h ==> b (funny hat) alt-j ==> c (tilde) alt-k ==> d (umlaut)
Other handy aspects of the alt-keys are the ) and . (alt e and r).
(I hope these symbols translate OK over CI$ and your particular
terminal and font.)
Thank you very very much for this information. I just tried it out,
and, indeed, the B&P, AGFA and IFINITYPE fonts included with Toaster
3.0 do support foreign characters. WHY were there no mention of this
in the manual or in the Font Guide (or, infact, in the advertising
literature that also came bundled in the package from the font
companies). Why do we have to find this kind of thing out the hard
way – but you saved the day.
Alt-e is the c in a circle (copyright) and alt-r is the r in a circle
(registered) for those who didn't get it. Those work with all of the
fonts the came with T3.0 including the FontBank ones. They don't
tell you that either.
BTW IFINITYPE fonts are in the SoftMaker drawer, for those who
haven't discovered that yet.
You'll find that there are ALL kinds of hidden tips and tricks about
the Toaster that you'll only find out in places like this, or in 3rd
party tutorials and such. For example, I only found out yesterday
that you can perform pedestal, gain, phase, red, green, and blue
level setups to the new Toaster board from the keyboard. (Using
external color bars, waveform monitor, and vectorscope.)
"I found…you can perform pedestal, gain, phase…..setups….from
the keyboard". Really? Please elucidate.
Pat,
From the switcher screen: RightALT-RightSHIFT-F10 brings up the Toaster4000's
hardware setup mode…
I certainly wouldn't recommend a bunch of haphazard adjustments here, though.
I didn't mess with my settings, because it specified external SMPTE color bars
be sent to input 1, and I don't have any source of external colorbars, so I
left my settings alone, other than some minor tweaking on the red, green, and
blue, since no external input is required for these 3 adjustments.
Jerry
Aaaaarrrggghhh 🙂
Where do you get this stuff?
More goodies, more.
Please give me more goodies 🙂
–Paul < Motorola Inside >
Paul,
Here's another goodie for you:
Create you some kind of framestore with a picture or logo or whatever, on a
black background, and save it. (Must be a framestore, RGB won't do…)
Change the black background to white, and save it as a framestore with a number
ONE HIGHER than the one with the black background.
From the switcher screen on Toaster4000, choose transition H41 (bottom left
corner).
Select and load the framestore with the black background.
Watcha think??
Jerry
Thanks for the info! It goes into my li'l tricks file to make me
indispensible at the station!
-Pat
<<< Thanks for the info! It goes into my li'l tricks file to make me
indispensible at the station! >>>
You're welcome, Pat!
Jerry
I hope that someone out there is putting all of these hidden resources
together in some form, book or tutorial on tape. The manual
certainly is very spare on details of how things actually work. Today
I ordered from SoftMaker their 124 typfaces (actually 52 font
families) which do have the extended set of characters for $100. An
added bonus is that they work with Windows, WorkPerfect, Word, et
al. I wish I could down load the fonts that are resident in my HP LJ
IV because they should work with the Toaster too. I am in Canada and
work on European projects too, and I find it amazing that an
international company (presumably) like NewTek could assume that the
extended set of characters isn't necessary. The world has changed,
and the market place is global. Get with it NewTek! Vanilla English
isn't good enough anymore.
Yeah, there's been a LOT of discussion about the relatively poor
quality of the manual for the new Toaster. On the font front, I can
see where it would be irritating if you were doing a good deal of
international work. I bet that the font collections that were
included with the new Toaster were provided at little or no cost to
Newtek, with the understanding that Newtek would provide opportunity
for the respective companies to market some 'expanded' font sets to
Toaster buyers, hence the 4 or 5 font upgrade specials included with
the Toaster docs. The new CG and its fonts were so drastically
improved over the old one that I was thrilled to have it; but then
again, I've done zero jobs that called for a tilda or any other
international character…
You said it. Of the 100s of fonts included with the Toaster, there
are only 12 font families that support the extended set. Leaving out
an accent in a name or a word is considered bad spelling. I am in
Canada and we use french names and words, not to mention french
completely all of the time. The Amiga and Toaster is also used
across Europe and around the world. It is annoying when a large,
profitable American company can't see across their own border, or
quite frankly, consider many users within it. It is a problem
Canadians have had for decades, but it is changing rapidly with the
Free-Trade agreement between Canada and the US. Let's hope America
recognizes that the rest of the world is out there too and those
people have change in their jeans to buy American products if they
can do the job. That's what the global economy is all about. I
intend to market my products in the Far East too, but I don't relish
the problems of finding Japanese fonts to work with the Toaster. (I
am not suggesting Japanese should be included, only the extended
ASCII set in which the A stands for American, and the S for Standard,
for those who don't know.)
I am thankful, once again of many times, that members of CIS came
through.
Glenn,
I'm sure I'd be frustrated too if I was in your position, but at least the
additional font collections for the Toaster appear to be priced pretty cheaply.
Also, you can read any PostScript TypeI font.
I know what you mean about the help here on CI$; everytime I get my bill and
declare that I'm getting off of it, somebody answers a question or solves a
problem for me that makes it all worthwhile…
Jerry
Glenn;
That is a font problem that everyone seems to have. I don't believe that
NewTek has done any of their own fonts but rather gets them from companies
that produce fonts for commercial use.
The problem then is that the vast majority of font work in the USA is
being done by users that are generating these fonts for American TV and
video work. Often times they don't even bother with a lower case
alphabet!
You are right as to what should happen but the reality of the situation is
that when someone is producing for a particular market…
-bill
"The problem then is that the vast majority of font work in the USA is
being done by users that are generating these fonts for American TV and
video work. Often times they don't even bother with a lower case
alphabet!"
You're reasonably on the mark, Bill.
FontBank typefaces, for example, duplicate precisely the character set found
in the original font. Most typefaces don't include international character sets
and never have. The whole concept of an "international character set" in a font
was introduced only recently with the advent of computers.
In the old type world, fonts were highly localized. There were type foundries
in every country and each produced fonts localized for the market they served.
Many fonts, incidentally, are designed without lower case letters. This is a
decision of the designer, not of the renderer.
Finally, nearly all typefaces are designed for the printed page, not
"American TV or video work".
There's a lot more about fonts as well, but I'll spare you the gory details.
Characters like the vertical pipe, for example, are computer oriented and are
rarely to be found in a commercial typeface.
Over the next couple of years, though, I think you'll find that all digital
fonts will carry a basic international character set, but not the computer
specific symbols.
Jerry
Jerry:
Would you mind explaining these gems in detail?
Jerry
Jerry,
I'm new to the world of vectorscopes, waveform monitors, and probably am not
qualified to go into the details of the complex video signal, but we'll make
this note an invitation for some of the more technical experts to jump in and
give us a briefing!
Jerry
Sounds reasonable to me!
Jerry
This is actually an Amiga trick which CG just happens to take
advantage of.. probably an accidental feature. My original message
had all the characters right, but it didn't translate well at all.
Try the dead keys in any text input.
This info should have gone to Glen Scott, but I see he got the message
anyway.
My main complaint is that I had to fake a computer terminal, and of the 2
mono-spaced fonts avalable in T3.0 (one was a non-outline, old-style
font), neither supported both '>' nor '|'.
Now, neither of those chars is particularly uncommon, and I find it
amazing that of 250 fonts I had only 2 choices, neither of which was
adequate.
Thanks,
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
"How about a mono-spaced courier font with '>' & '|' charachters?"
Actually we're doing a whole library of mono-spaced alphabets. It will be
available in about six months.
No serious graphic artist or typographer would be caught dead using such a
font, which is probably why no one has made these to date in PostScript.
But we've had so many requests from people wanting these that I decided to
invest the time and money in creating a library of them.
Jerry
'No serious graphic artist or typographer would be caught dead using
such a font'
Gee, then I guess these professionals have never had to format
tabular data in computer style type?
How nice of you guys to condescend to help us poor illiterates.
(You'll have to excuse me, but your flippant and rude treatment of
the Amiga – while simultaneously asking for help in using it – has
left a bad taste in my mouth. I hope you learn to treat your
potential clients with greater respect. Until then, you won't be
getting my business.) (I just read the thrashing you took in the
Amiga User section, and while I do not consider your comments Amiga
Bashing per se, you sure did cop an attitude, and made it very clear
how little you thought of the system. Tell me, would the average
rabid, myopic, PC or Mac user treat you any differently if you
started calling their system 'archaic'?) (BTW, that was a rhetorical
question. _I'm_ not interested in a flame fest, I just thought I'd
let you know that the toes you're stepping on could well belong to
potential clients. And yes, as owners of a dying format, some of us
do tend to get a little over-protective.) Keep On Toastin' Erik Flom
Gee, Erik, I didn't mean to insult your religion or anything like that.
I was just expressing my personal opinions about the Amiga OS and
not demonstrating "flippant and rude treatment" of a sacred object.
You might check the Amiga postings again, though, in regard to the
"thrashing" I allegedly took: several people noted that they shared
my opinion of those people who essentially deify the Amiga (or
whatever machine they use) and assault any one who dares criticize
the object of their veneration. Obviously I tend to agree with these
latter comments.
Perhaps you expressed this sad state of affairs best when you said
"as owners of a dying format, some of us do tend to get a little
over-protective". It just could be that the unwillingness to listen
to constructive criticism with an open mind has led to what you
obviously perceive as a terminal condition.
* * *
Professional typographers have been using "proportional" typefaces
to set colums of data for the past couple of centuries. It was
actually the typewriter and then the computer that introduced the
concept of monospaced type because of the limitations of the
underlying mechanisms. ("proportional" is actually a misnomer.
Because of the nature of typesetting technology, the slug on which
the character was cast would always be just as wide as the character
itself in order to provide proper visual spacing.)
Selection of the appropriate typeface and the use of suitable
application software will allow you to set visually appealing columns
of data without need of mono-spaced faces. In Microsoft Word,
QuarkXpress, Aldus Pagemaker and other programs, there are tab
delineators for decimal points as well as right-justified entries.
Usually these are more than adequate for the task.
You might want to take a look at "The QuarkXpress Book" by David
Blatner for a really good narrative on setting columnar text.
Although specifically dedicated to Quark, the techniques Blatner
describes can be used with any sophisticated page layout or word
processing program.
* * *
Finally, in regard to your comments about having to restrict my speech in
order to avoid stepping on the toes of potential customers – well, I have no
illusions about being able to please all the people all the time.
My comments about the Amiga OS represent my opinions to which I am most
certainly entitled, as you are to yours.
If anyone is going to judge my product on the basis of what I personally
think about some other product, there isn't much I can or would do about it.
Guess I'm just not a big fan of attempting to punish other people because they
hold opinions contrary to my own.
But to each their own, as they say.
It's not 'my religion'. I got off the Amiga soapbox awhile ago. Many
others have not. If it weren't for the Toaster, I'd be on a different
platform entirely. (I was actually taking pity on you for being so foolish
as to say something bad about the Amiga in an AmigaUser forum. It's almost
like me walking over to the Mac Fora and saying "Yer OS sucks, cuz it
doesn't have pre-emptive multitasking!")
The reason I would not support your products is that you have shown a
dislike for the platform. Since you dislike it, I can only assume you will
provide the usual mac or PC biased tech support so common these days. My
money is better spent supporting those few who still support this
platform.
And as for Columnar text. I don't give a rat's ### what 'professional
typographers' do. I'm doing video and charging by the hour. I can't afford
to spend time ligning up characters when a mono-spaced font will work just
fine, and alot faster.
And not including basic chars like '>' and '|' is inexcusable. (Or are you
just going to make us pay extra for those 'special' characters? :^)
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
Erik:
I'm not going to waste my time responding to your remarks.
Suffice it to say that I disagree with you.
Jerry