- TYPECAD FONT EDITOR - Demo Version The editor uses icons that look and operate are similar to the Calamus FE. BUT, there are differences and additions... The draw screen incorporates a ruler at the top and side with guide marks displayed and changeable at any time simply by clicking, holding and dragging the leters on the ruler. The guide lines are marked on the top ruler as "L"(left em square), "C"(center) and "R"(right em square). The side ruler marks "U,A,X,B,D,L" are Upper em square,Acender,X-height,Baseline, Decender and Lower em square. Although the side guide lines are freely positionable, they should remain in this order. The top guide lines are also adjustable, but "C" line always remains in the centre. Guidelines can be locked by clicking the black box where the top and side rulers meet. An "L" will be displayed when the rulers are locked. Here is a description of the icons, left to right: Arrow icon: Is selected as default. Use to select and move points. (More details at end of these notes.) Clipper icon: Select this icon to delete lines and curves. When enabled, simply click the points you want deleted. Lines will be deleted by clicking one of the end points and curves by clicking the end points OR the tangent points. Disabled by a right-click or choosing another icon. Pencil icon: This along with a line or curve icon will allow you to draw lines or curves. A start-point is started with a left-click with the hammer icon highlighted ONLY. Choose a curve or line to continue. If you have a selected point in the middle of a path you will insert a line or curve into that spot. Paths are automatically closed when you change characters. Line/curve: These icons, when selected, determine what type of object will be placed. (curves are initially drawn with tangent points mid-way between end points. Auto smooth: When highlighted a small cross cursor is displayed. Click on any point of a path (with curves, of course) that you wish smoothed. Four curves set in a diamond or square will generate a circle. Right click to disable. Reverse icon: To reverse the drawing direction of a path. When selected, the mouse changes to a small cross hair. It will de-select itself after you click on any point in a path. Disable by a right-click Connect end This will cause all open paths to connect into points: closed paths. A CLOSE PATH Routine is also called when changing characters or going to the FILE Menu. Snap icon: For invoking the snap-to-grid function. (Snap coordinates can be set from the calculator.) the snap is apparent if you are in draw mode. Snap is not shown if you are in a select point mode (arrow), but as soon as you select a point the snap kicks in again and will position the point to the nearest snap-position. Holding the mouse button and moving the mouse will cause the selected point to move from snap-point to snap-point. Default is set to 688x688 on a 64000x64000 grid. Disk icon: For loading, saving, merging or erasing font files. Also, this is where you fill in the details of font name, your name, company etc. Bit-Image: A fat-bit editor for the font lable. Can also load *.BL3 files generated in Degas Elite. On your master disk is a sample graphic that may be loaded into Degas Elite from the block menu. You may use the dimensions of this sample to do up any graphic for loading into TypeCad's label editor which will be saved with the font file. Notice that the sample graphic has 4 pixels defining the corners of the graphic area. Leave these in place and replace the graphic area itself with whatever you want. Using the four corner points define a new block by pressing the ESC key and grabbing the area on the corner pixels and re-save under a name of your choice. *Note: When properly defined (160 pixels x 16 pixels - 382 bytes) the file will load directly into TypeCad. Buffer 1&2: For temporary storage of paths or characters. Just like the Calamus FE except you have two of them. Also, if you hold the ALT key and click the buffer icon when a buffer is full, then it will copy the image to the screen and still retain the data so you may copy out as many times as you want. Calculator: The calculator gives you all the features of the Calamus editor, but is much easier to use. For instance: to rotate 45 degrees click on "Rotate". An editable field will appear showing the default setting (180 degrees). Click in the area of the field and a cursor will appear on the setting. Hitting ESC and entering "45" and "return" will set the degree rotation clockwise. (-45 will go counter clockwise) Click "DO IT" and Bingo! a rotated full character. If no points or paths are selected prior to entering the calculator, all the points are acted on. Otherwise only previously selected points are modified. Other features of the calculator work similar. i.e. XY MODIFY setting are in percent of original. size. 80% means reduce to 80% of original size. Selecting "Global" before executing any calculation will apply that calculation to ALL all points of all characters. Now you can italicize all your characters at once. Accuracy of 3 decimal places is supported (i.e. 80.250) Pin icon: This will define the center of rotation. Highlight this icon and the mouse will change to a pin shape. Click anywhere on the drawing surface to define that position as your rotation centre. This feature is GREAT for doing asterisks! Do one vertical arm and set the rotation point at its base. Put a copy of the shape into a buffer and then rotate the arm 60 degrees. Copy out the arm again (alt click on the buffer) and rotate again at 60 degrees. Repeat until you have the whole asterisk. *If the snap is activated the centre point will be defined to the nearest snap point. Kerning: Click it on and a non-filled character is shown along with the kerning bars. the left bar positions are defined by a left-click on the position you want to place it. Right bars are the same except use a right-click. Auto kerning is achieved by holding the SHIFT key and left or right-clicking the kern icon (notice the icon graphic itself). Left-click for form kern or right-click for width kern. You may also choose kerning from any zoom as well as change characters by choosing them from the character table. This really makes kerning less tedious! Kerning of all characters at once is accomplished with a CONTROL-SHIFT/left or right-click. The program will start with the first defined character, kern it, then proceed to the next defined character. You may stop the process with a CONTROL-"C". Blank character cells are skipped. NOTE: When you've completed a full font to your satisfaction you can italicize it globally (about 10 seconds) and kern the whole font (about 6 minutes). Presto! the italic version is complete. Whew, this saves about 4 hours! Tangents: Turns curve tangent lines on and off. Interactive When invoked all point movements are shown with line Icon: and curve re-draws in relation to the point movement. This is especially useful for shaping the curves by eye. Select all: Click this and all points of all paths will be (lasso) selected. Zooms: There are four of them. Default is 1. Click on any zoom. A box will appear that moves as you move the mouse, showing the area within the box that will be zoomed to when you left-click. Cancelled with a right-click. Zooming down is as easy as picking a lower zoom. The image will remain centered on the previous zoom. While in a zoom level from 2-4 you may pan and scroll by a pre-defined step by pressing the appropriate arrow key. Combining the arrow key with any shift key will increase the step by 4 times. Link icon: will link all previously separate paths to be linked into one continues path. These paths are linked in the order they were placed on the draw screen with the end point of the first path being connected to the start of the next path and so on. This allows the use of a library of shapes to be created and then combined and linked together to form continues path characters which are are more "compatible" with the drawing program Outline Art. Note: The automatic closing of paths is disabled on the bottom row of characters on the character table. You may use these 16 cells to temporarily store a library of open ended paths for use with the link feature. * DO NOT load a font file into Calamus that contains open ended paths and if you use these cells for characters use the close path icon to ensure properly closed paths. Trash icon: For deleting full characters or paths. If no path is selected it will confirm if the full character is to be deleted. (no more ooopppsss...) Will also confirm deletion of selected path. Desk: Will clear the screen and display a standard GEM menu bar. You may now call any accessories that you have installed. Choosing "Return To Editor" from the header on the accessory drop down menu will re-display the editor where you left off. Blank the screen: If you do not have one of the many screen blanking programs installed you may blank your screen to black when you want to leave your work for a while. This saves your screen from pre-mature burn in. Hitting any key or mouse key will re-activate the editor. All the definable characters for Calamus are displayed in the character table. To choose any one, click it. By clicking on the black bar at the top of the character table ALL the defined characters are shown as inverse. clicking again, anywhere on the screen, returns the table to normal. Underneath the character table you may display any of two fonts that you may load in from the File menu. You may transfer full characters or paths through the buffers back and forth between fonts. Click the font that you want active at any time. *** SELECTING POINTS: (With the arrow icon highlighted) Selection of full paths is achieved by ALT-clicking a point on any path, Or... Selection of individual point groups by LEFT-SHIFT-clicking any point. Selecting an already selected point will de-select it. Missing a point (too far away for the routine to find the point) will NOT cause all the points to be de-selected, as long as you are holding the SHIFT or ALT key. GROUP SELECTION: Holding the LEFT-SHIFT key and click somewhere to the upper left of a group of points thatyou wish to select. The editor will first search the character data for a point within range (3 pixel area around a point). If no point is found, the editor will show the mouse as an arrow. Now when you move the mouse to the lower right a rubber box will be drawn allowing you to surround a group of points within this box. On releasing the mouse button all points within the box will be selected. This is especially useful when you want to select a group of points that overlap on top of each other allowing you to move them all at once. For instance: a start and end point that are in the same poition. Note: If you try to copy any points selected in this way into the clip-boards, you will get a warning that individual points cannot be stored this way. Only full paths selected with ALT-click or full characters may be placed into the clip-boards. Box selection of points (even all points) defines them as individual points and not full paths. Each point remains selected until you left-click somewhere off the character without holding the SHIFT or ALT key . All selected points will then be de-selected. *** LOADING CALAMUS FONTS Calamus fonts are loaded as simply as choosing the LOAD CALAMUS option from the file menu. TypeCAD will load any *.CFN file including protected Calamus Compugraphic fonts but will take a few seconds to sort things out. Any protected font loaded into TypeCAD, when resaved, will have all protection removed. *** SAVING A CLAMUS FONT With this demo version of TypeCAD you may save a file, but only the first 16 characters are saved "as is". The rest of the character set is defined as a star graphic. All font files generated by TypeCAD are 100% compatible with all Calamus versions and the Calamus font editor. *** SAVING AS A CALAMUS VECTOR GRAPHIC Vector Graphic files may be saved of any single character cell. These .CVG files are saved with the image in a vector box the same ratio as the draw screen (zoom one) is to the image. For this reason you should enlarge and centre any image as big as you can in the window of zoom one before saving. This way the surrounding box margins will be minimal. *** IMPORTING AND EDITING PUBLISHING PARTNER OR PAGESTREAM FONTS Fonts that exist for Publishing Partner and PageStream may be imported into TypeCad and saved for use by Calamus. From the disk dialog box choose either Load PageStream or Load Pub Partner. Choosing one will display a standard file select box with the extender set to *.PFT. for Publishing Partner fonts and *.DMF for PageStream fonts. After choosing the file that you want the program will load and convert the character data to Calamus format. This will take a few seconds. After conversion the font title line, in the disk dialog box, will reflect which of the two formats has been converted. i.e: "Publishing Partner Font" or "PageStream Font." Clicking on EDIT will return you to the draw screen. You may be surprised that the characters are smallish, compared to some of the Calamus fonts. This is the nature of the editors that where originally used to edit the original Publishing Partner fonts and converted PageStream fonts. The character, as shown in TypeCad, reflects the original size/position/draw screen ratio of these editors. To turn these fonts into proper Calamus fonts, it is recommended that you enlarge each character (via calculator) by 130% in both the X and Y dimension and position the letter base with your prefered base line in TypeCad by using the MOVE feature in the calculator, then adjust the guidemarks to suit. Publishing Partner and PageStream fonts have no kerning data, so you will need to edit the kern for each character. Also, the bit-image label will have to be attended to as well as filling in the proper name in the disk access dialog box. Note: When a Publishing Partner or PageStream font is converted there is a chance that some of the characters have single start- points in the character data that PageStream does'nt mind but drives Calamus nuts! TypeCad will eliminate any of these extra start points, but only after the character has be drawn on- screen. After importation you should view each character briefly by choosing each character in turn from the charcter table before saving. *** QUITING When quitting the program, you will get an alert box giving 3 choices of Save, Abandon or Cancel. Saving will allow you to save your file first then the program will quit and you will be returned to the desktop. Abandon quits immediatly. Cancel returns you to the editor. *** UNDO Occasionally, while editing a character, you may wish you could start over again from where you first started. Simple...press UNDO. As long as you have not activated the disk icon, the character will be re-defined as it was when you first entered the character cell. If you have trashed the character, pressing UNDO will restore it as it was before using the trashcan. *** SAVING PREFERENCES From the disk menu you may save the current settings of your calculator in a small disk file called TC_PREF.DEF. The next time you boot TypeCAD, this file is loaded and used to pre-set the calculator to your own preferences. Two more things: I recommend you operate this editor (or any other program) with either Quick ST or Turbo ST. These programs will make the editor feel much better, especially when your working with characters of considerable detail. * DO NOT use this editor with a program called "DCSHOWIT". This utility caused serious problems with TypeCAD. Even though TypeCAD will seems to operate fine it will save a scrambled or otherwise unusable font file. Have fun! You may order TypeCAD now for $70 US or $80 Canadian Send to: Gregg Rodgers 1324 Eastern Drive Port Coquitlam, B.C. Canada V3C 2R9 Genie address :G.RODGERS2