22 July 2021, 13:24 | #1 |
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Question on Fonts
Hi All, not the most interesting of subjects but I am trying to get to grips with Amiga fonts and all the different types there are out there. I know fonts reside in the Sys/fonts drawer but apps I have (WW7, Page stream 3 & Final writer) all have fonts drawers in their respective parent drawers.
I downloaded fonts and copied them to WW7 fonts drawer then ran the tool there, the fonts appeared in the program, but not in the other apps. Is there a manual on understanding fonts anyone knows of? Will apps read the sys/fonts drawer and use fonts accordingly or do you have to install fonts in each app, in theory if this is the case then you may have the same app installed several times (not the most elegant of solutions I would have thought) Then the different types come into play, intellifont, compugraphic etc et the list seems endless. Its all confusing so I am trying to find out the best way to manage my fonts. As always thanks in advance Cheers Dave |
22 July 2021, 14:14 | #2 |
Also known as GarethQ
Join Date: May 2019
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Hi Dave, what are you saying....fonts are damn interesting!!!
It was actually an interesting time for fonts for the Amiga, as it straddled the bitmap and vector style fonts era. Some of this is going from memory, but the reason the apps would have their own fonts folder is speed and compatibility. The Amiga would slow down quite heavily when the Sys/fonts folder filled up, so if each app kept their fonts to their program folder, you could still have a zippy OS. Of course the flip side is the other program could not use said fonts. I can't remember if font managers existed on the Amiga, I would be surprised if it didn't but that would allow you to activate and deactivate fonts in the Sys/fonts folder. So you had speed and variety. The other issue is compatibility of fonts. PostScript(PS) especially, were very temperamental and had compatibility issues with different programs. Imagine 3D for example, uses PS fonts, but would not see the PS fonts Cinema 4D used. I quite like the idea of keeping my system fonts folder lean and then if the software I use allows it, keep a separate folder for that app. with my massive CF cards on my system, space is not an issue. I am busy doing the same as you, so I will post updates as I get on. Last edited by fxgogo; 22 July 2021 at 14:14. Reason: spelling mistakes |
22 July 2021, 22:45 | #3 |
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matsp888 uploaded some AGFA compugraphic fonts to add to your collection
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23 July 2021, 01:38 | #4 |
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fxgogo has given a good overview of the situation. To expand on some details, the system font renderer (diskfont.library) can only handle Amiga bitmap and Compugraphic/Intellifont fonts. Unfortunately Intellifont never really caught on as a standard and the industry gravitated to PostScript and TTF fonts. Since there was no support for these at a system level, Amiga word processor developers included their own font renderers to handle the other formats. And sometimes their Intellifont renderers were better than the system one. Hence why they store their fonts locally instead of the systems Fonts: directory.
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23 July 2021, 02:19 | #5 | |
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Quote:
Thanks, great resource! High-quality, "official" Compugraphic fonts are quite hard to find. |
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23 July 2021, 09:18 | #6 |
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The nice thing was that the 2.x+ font system (bullet.library) allowed for multiple font engines, so even though it only supported old Amiga bitmap fonts and Compugraphic fonts, it was possible to add more font engines to it.
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23 July 2021, 15:01 | #7 | |
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Quote:
Gotta love the extensibility of the Amiga! |
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23 July 2021, 18:35 | #8 |
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Actually, that is diskfont, not bullet. Bullet is the compugraphic engine. Yes, of course, there are true-type support libraries on aminet.
Actually, compugraphic is really ill-suited for bitmap fonts. Compugraphic fonts are more for professional printing applications. Not that I know of. |
24 July 2021, 04:48 | #9 |
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Could anyone upload these fonts to the Zone? I only have my phone for Internet, and I get 'filetype not supported'
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01 August 2021, 22:02 | #10 |
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This is great, I have a much better understanding of this now and some great site to get fonts from. Makes sense really if you think of it but being out of the Amiga game for many years and using windows (I know :-( ) you don't really think of fonts much (at least I don't) but I will now.
Thanks to everyone who replied |
01 August 2021, 23:32 | #11 |
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In the zone as AGFA_FONTS_matsp888.zip. Can you post if you can't download them, there are also some AGFA Fonts on the ftp server, I don't know what those ones are like.
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11 August 2021, 17:14 | #12 |
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Thanks for uploading these to the Zone! Looking forward to trying them out.... I have a Slight Amiga font addiction! ??
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