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 28-Feb-98:
Update for X-DVE and FontMachine
Registered users may download an update to X-DVE v3.10 and FontMachine v3.03. Download
 CU Amiga 3/98
FontMachine 3
Animated Color-Font Phantasies
 The very name of the program explains its functions: FontMachine is a machine to make
fonts! With FontMachine you can easily create any type of colour font: you simply have to enhance an already existing
font with shadows, shades and textures. FontMachine works in real time: it always gives an immediate answer to
your action and shows the real image of the colour font you are creating. FontMachine creates fonts in Amiga standard
ColorFont format which can be used with any program for AMIGA.
 FontMachine has been created with the collaboration and suggestions of several video
professionals looking for quality and originality of titles. Video professionals wish to maintain and improve the
quality of their productions, relying on more and more perfect tools and giving new solutions to the problems concerning
titles.
For this reason, the most important feature in titles for TV, weddings and sport is the type of characters. It
is obvious that a colour font is not only destined to be used in videos. It can also be used to create World Wide
Web pages of Internet in HTML, Desk Top Publishing, documents, advertising, manuals, etc.
As usual, AMIGA offers additional opportunities to its users thanks to the built-in support for colour fonts.
Famous firms, like KARA Computer Graphics, have seized the opportunity of suppling AMIGA users with several series
of high quality fonts ready to be used. The great success of these fonts (how many times, watching TV, we have
exclaimed: "Oh, these are the KARA's fonts!!!") has led to a lack of originality in professional videos.
In order to have always different fonts, the most willing users can rely on some good programs and create colour
fonts manually.
Neverthless, not all users are ready to draw every single character of a complete set by hand: it easy to get
discouraged!!! It is for all those reasons that we have created FontMachine which, thanks to the new version, has
reached such a level of professionality to be even more productive, efficient and reliable than its predecessor.
Here is a list of the features of FontMachine:
- Support for fonts in AmigaFont, ColorFont, Agfa Intellifont formats
- Creation of fonts in AMIGA ColorFont format up to 256 colours
- Emboss effects with programmable direction and size
- Bevel effects with programmable direction and size
- 3D effects with programmable direction, colours and size
- Shadow effects with programmable direction, colours and size
- Border effects with programmable direction and size
- Anti-aliasing to eliminate jagged contours
- Front textures (programmable or casual texture portion)
- Border textures (programmable or casual texture portion)
- Support for IFF-ILBM or DataType (under OS3.xx) format textures
- Creation of programmable Plasma textures
- Creation of programmable Pattern textures
- Automatic re-computation of the colours of textures
- Ability to modify the palette of the font created
- Ability to save and load any preset style
- Asynchronous updating of the font preview window
- WYSIWYG approach: what you see is what you get
- Ability to save only part of the set of characters of a font
- Automatic reduction of the colours of a Colorfont
- Ability to customize the sets of palette and create any colour shading
- Ability to manage the sets of palette with Plasma and Pattern textures
- "Copy" and "Paste" functions with sets of palette for textures
- File of preset mathematical textures
- Saving of textures in IFF-ILBM format
- Optimization of the palette of textures
- Optimization of the palette of a ColorFont
- Automatic re-mapping of the colours of attributes
- Ability to interface with external programs by means of ARexx
New for version 3:
The whole program has been vastly improved and extended in order to achieve better performances and gain compatibility
to the new RTG graphic standards. FM3 is now perfectly compatible with CyberGFX and DraCO. The user interface had
been refined and slighlty modified to make it easy to control the new features of the program. A new incredible
FM3 feature is the possibility to import animated textures in the standard AnimBrush format and render animated
texts as Anim5 anims. Additionally, Pattern and Plasma textures has been extended as multiple frame objects. An
example: loading a Plasma or a Pattern in a 32 colours screen, creates a texture with an identical number of frames
(32). Each frame represents a step in the cicling palette of the texture, so it' really simple to create "moving"
plasmas or rotating patterns. With the help of an extended set of AREXX commands and specific AREXX scripts it
is really fast and easy to make animated text. Users can now select their preferred AREXX script from an intuitive
and helpful AREXX window. To make thing even more easy, the AREXX interface of FontMachine now supports localization
and on-line help. FM3 now support automatic texture centering for each gliph of the font and the font preview window
now respects the font metric. We've made some changes and optimizations in the behaviour of FM3 (free space check
before saving a font, ability to change the font name, safety checks, etc.) in order to get more flexibility from
the program itself and to give users the maximum comfort.
System Requirements:
FontMachine runs on any Amiga (or Draco) with 2Mb+ of memory, AmigaOS 2.04 or better. A HD is required.
Price:
129 DM (Suggested Retail Price)
Upgrades:
60 DM from version 1.x/2.x to 3.0
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