Hello hukka

[anonymous]

Hello hukka,

It is good to see that you have recently put a lot of hard work into your Fony program and web site. It is also good to see that Fony has not been abandoned, like so many other programs on the web.

I thought that I would take the time to let you know that there is someone out there that noticed your efforts.

You might consider posting a message on comp.fonts (or other newsgroups) letting people know that a new version has been posted.

On your Fony page:
hukka.furtopia.org/projects/fony/
you need to fix the "Forum" link at the lower right-hand corner to point to the new address.

A suggestion, use UPX (the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables) to reduce the size of Fony.exe .
Get it at: upx.sourceforge.net
The command line string to compress it the most is: upx -9 Fony.exe

Would you like me to upload the following eight fonts from B.J. Winzer that were once on the Fony page?
Apshai.fon
Broderbund.fon
BX1.fon
Hacker.fon
Impossible Mission.fon
LED Storm.fon
Rolf.fon
Wizard.fon
(I downloaded them on 2007-Mar-6)

In your "Minimum TODO for 1.4.0 release:" section, you list:
* Verify: "\" (ASCII 092) doesn't show up in either Preview and font itself?
I see no problem with the \ character in the font editor or font preview. By that, I mean it does show up.

And now, requests.

On the Font preview dialog (Tools > Test Font), add a feature that displays a preview text sample that is based upon the current font's Charset setting. By that, I mean that the text sample for an ANSI font would differ from that of an OEM font, etc. .

Provide a 16x16 character table palette that would allow the user to drag and drop characters to the text sample area which are difficult to enter via the keyboard. It would be good if the characters in the table would be highlighted, or not, based on whether or not the character already exists in the text sample. (A more simple alternative would be to provide a way to inject a 16x16 character table in the sample text area. Then the user could cut and past the characters as desired.)

Add support for CTRL+X, CTRL+C, CTRL+V, and CTRL+A in the text preview.

Lastly, allow for the sample text to be saved and loaded from text files. Those text files should be saved in text format except for the control characters, which should be escaped in C style or URL percent style.

Thanks,
anonymous

[AVRRQPYNNZJUY]

[hukka]

Oct 24, 2008 17:45:01 GMT 2 @anonymous said:

Hello hukka,

It is good to see that you have recently put a lot of hard work into your Fony program and web site. It is also good to see that Fony has not been abandoned, like so many other programs on the web.

I thought that I would take the time to let you know that there is someone out there that noticed your efforts.

Thanks for posting! It's reassuring to know someone still uses this thing.

You might consider posting a message on comp.fonts (or other newsgroups) letting people know that a new version has been posted.

Good idea, might do that.

On your Fony page: you need to fix the "Forum" link at the lower right-hand corner to point to the new address.

Done. The site is kind of in a flux right now as I work on reformatting it into several subpages.

A suggestion, use UPX (the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables) to reduce the size of Fony.exe.

I do that for the release versions, I was too lazy to pack the alpha builds but I'll do that from now on.

Would you like me to upload the following eight fonts from B.J. Winzer that were once on the Fony page?

No need, I have them on my hard drive. I removed them from the page as my intention was (and is) to separate them onto a separate page. Thanks though.

In your "Minimum TODO for 1.4.0 release:" section, you list:
* Verify: "\" (ASCII 092) doesn't show up in either Preview and font itself?
I see no problem with the \ character in the font editor or font preview. By that, I mean it does show up.

It works for me too but one person proved with screenshots that he had this problem... I couldn't figure out a reason for such, though.

On the Font preview dialog (Tools > Test Font), add a feature that displays a preview text sample that is based upon the current font's Charset setting. By that, I mean that the text sample for an ANSI font would differ from that of an OEM font, etc.

Good idea. I need to figure out how to implement it in a simple enough way as to not to confuse a novice user, though.

Provide a 16x16 character table palette that would allow the user to drag and drop characters to the text sample area which are difficult to enter via the keyboard. It would be good if the characters in the table would be highlighted, or not, based on whether or not the character already exists in the text sample. (A more simple alternative would be to provide a way to inject a 16x16 character table in the sample text area. Then the user could cut and past the characters as desired.)

Why not simply allow the user to drag a glyph from the glyph palette into the preview window? But for now, you could just hold down Alt and type the ASCII code for the glyph you want to insert.

Anyway, I'm not making this feature a priority for 1.4.0 as it'll take some time and effort to implement.

Add support for CTRL+X, CTRL+C, CTRL+V, and CTRL+A in the text preview.

As you probably knew, you can use the context menu for those functions right now, but yeah, it would make more sense to support the normal shortcut keys for those functions too.

Lastly, allow for the sample text to be saved and loaded from text files. Those text files should be saved in text format except for the control characters, which should be escaped in C style or URL percent style.

Good idea, I'll implement that at some point.

Again, thanks for the feedback!

[anonymous]

Oct 25, 2008 13:24:33 GMT 2 hukka said:

Oct 24, 2008 17:45:01 GMT 2 @anonymous said:

Hello hukka,

It is good to see that you have recently put a lot of hard work into your Fony program and web site. It is also good to see that Fony has not been abandoned, like so many other programs on the web.

I thought that I would take the time to let you know that there is someone out there that noticed your efforts.

Thanks for posting! It's reassuring to know someone still uses this thing.

No problem. Exactly my reason for posting. Also, like a street performer puts some money in his donation box to give passersby the urge to donate, I was hoping that my post would prompt others to do the same. So far no luck.

You might consider posting a message on comp.fonts (or other newsgroups) letting people know that a new version has been posted.

Good idea, might do that.

Good. That should get you more traffic.

On your Fony page: you need to fix the "Forum" link at the lower right-hand corner to point to the new address.

Done. The site is kind of in a flux right now as I work on reformatting it into several sub-pages.

Good. I await the new site layout.

A suggestion, use UPX (the Ultimate Packer for eXecutables) to reduce the size of Fony.exe.

I do that for the release versions, I was too lazy to pack the alpha builds but I'll do that from now on.

Understood. I am lazy too.

Would you like me to upload the following eight fonts from B.J. Winzer that were once on the Fony page?

No need, I have them on my hard drive. I removed them from the page as my intention was (and is) to separate them onto a separate page. Thanks though.

OK, be sure to provide a link on the Fony page to the new font(s) page(s).

In your "Minimum TODO for 1.4.0 release:" section, you list:
* Verify: "\" (ASCII 092) doesn't show up in either Preview and font itself?
I see no problem with the \ character in the font editor or font preview. By that, I mean it does show up.

It works for me too but one person proved with screenshots that he had this problem... I couldn't figure out a reason for such, though.

Well, you should add to the description something like "intermittent" or "on some computers." This would make things more clear.

On the Font preview dialog (Tools > Test Font), add a feature that displays a preview text sample that is based upon the current font's Charset setting. By that, I mean that the text sample for an ANSI font would differ from that of an OEM font, etc.

Good idea. I need to figure out how to implement it in a simple enough way as to not to confuse a novice user, though.

Yes, I can see where confusion might occur. If you had save text and load text functions, you could provide a set of files with the names being the Charset. It would be up to the user to load the file that is appropriate for the font being edited.

Provide a 16x16 character table palette that would allow the user to drag and drop characters to the text sample area which are difficult to enter via the keyboard. It would be good if the characters in the table would be highlighted, or not, based on whether or not the character already exists in the text sample. (A more simple alternative would be to provide a way to inject a 16x16 character table in the sample text area. Then the user could cut and past the characters as desired.)

Why not simply allow the user to drag a glyph from the glyph palette into the preview window? But for now, you could just hold down Alt and type the ASCII code for the glyph you want to insert.

Anyway, I'm not making this feature a priority for 1.4.0 as it'll take some time and effort to implement.

It is all about making things as convenient as possible by requiring the fewest number of steps and the least amount of thought per operation. Dragging a character from the glyph palette would require the user to slide the slider to gain access to all of the characters. (unless they have a real big monitor) That is why I specified a 16x16 grid which is small enough to allow the user to see the whole picture. Alt-keypad character entry, like back in DOS days, is not what I would call convenient, but I understand it is good for the current version of Fony. Lastly, after going through all the effort of composing a text sample, it is currently lost after closing the program. The load/save functions really need to be added. Also, I do realize that I can cut and past into another program to save the preview text, but this is not optimum.

As for not making this feature a priority for 1.4.0, rightly so. But, I would put it high on the list for 1.4.1.

Add support for CTRL+X, CTRL+C, CTRL+V, and CTRL+A in the text preview.

As you probably knew, you can use the context menu for those functions right now, but yeah, it would make more sense to support the normal shortcut keys for those functions too.

Yes, I knew about the mouse function for cut and pate. I am more of a CLI type than a GUI type, so I am a user of the keyboard and keyboard shortcuts. I suspect that there are others out there like me who will appreciate this feature when implemented.

Lastly, allow for the sample text to be saved and loaded from text files. Those text files should be saved in text format except for the control characters, which should be escaped in C style or URL percent style.

Good idea, I'll implement that at some point.

Again, thanks for the feedback!

As I said above, the save and load preview text functions are needed. Sooner rather than later, I hope.


One last thing, the Sans-serifed example glyph and the Serifed example glyph do not display the first 32 characters when working on OEM fonts. They just appear as hollow rectangles. The fonts being used to derive the characters do not cover those 32 characters. If you had a place where the user could specify the font to be used for each, this would allow the user to specify ones that do have the characters.

Thanks,
anonymous

[AVRRQPYNNZJUY]

P.S. Reply #2 above was my mistake, I hit the enter key after entering the Security Check string. Remove that message (and this P.S.) if possible.

[hukka]

Oct 26, 2008 19:06:23 GMT 2 @anonymous said:

Also, like a street performer puts some money in his donation box to give passersby the urge to donate, I was hoping that my post would prompt others to do the same. So far no luck.

I guess there isn't much to talk about with Fony, except for feature requests. It's easy enough to use and doesn't have too many bugs so there's no reason for most to post. It's been months since I received any bug reports or feature requests by email.

One last thing, the Sans-serifed example glyph and the Serifed example glyph do not display the first 32 characters when working on OEM fonts. They just appear as hollow rectangles. The fonts being used to derive the characters do not cover those 32 characters. If you had a place where the user could specify the font to be used for each, this would allow the user to specify ones that do have the characters.

They display fine for me, actually, but I'll take a look at the algorithm used to choose the fonts. The fonts used in the example glyphs area seem to change depending on the font loaded. I can't remember how it works right now but I'll see if I can improve it.
Thanks for the report.

[anonymous]

Oct 28, 2008 15:47:59 GMT 2 hukka said:

Oct 26, 2008 19:06:23 GMT 2 @anonymous said:

Also, like a street performer puts some money in his donation box to give passersby the urge to donate, I was hoping that my post would prompt others to do the same. So far no luck.

I guess there isn't much to talk about with Fony, except for feature requests.

You have a point there. I do have a few feature requests that I would like to make, but not until you finish the current final version and the other small requests that I already spoke of. I would not want to distract you from the current tasks at hand.

It's easy enough to use and doesn't have too many bugs so there's no reason for most to post. It's been months since I received any bug reports or feature requests by email.

I am happy to have been the one to break the silence, though, through this message board and not email. Speaking of email, do you still have your ".fi" email address that was in the readme file of early Fony releases? If so, do you forward incoming mail to it to your gmail account? Will you respond to messages sent to your ".fi" account from it, or from gmail? My reason for asking is that I have made a personal choice to not communicate with others through gmail.

One last thing, the Sans-serifed example glyph and the Serifed example glyph do not display the first 32 characters when working on OEM fonts. They just appear as hollow rectangles. The fonts being used to derive the characters do not cover those 32 characters. If you had a place where the user could specify the font to be used for each, this would allow the user to specify ones that do have the characters.

They display fine for me, actually, but I'll take a look at the algorithm used to choose the fonts. The fonts used in the example glyphs area seem to change depending on the font loaded. I can't remember how it works right now but I'll see if I can improve it.
Thanks for the report.

Thanks for everything, and good luck with with development. I will be checking your Fony page and the forum regularly to keep up with developments. I will get back to you with more input when the time is right.

Thanks,
anonymous

[AVRRQPYNNZJUY]

[hukka]

Technically I do still have my nic.fi email account, but I basically don't read mail sent to it anymore since it has no spam filter and pretty much everything sent there is spam. I tried to set it up to redirect to gmail but it didn't appear to be possible. Thus, nowadays I only use gmail.

Also, it's okay to post more feature requests already - sometimes when I'm bored I like to code things that are fun to implement, even if they're not as crucial as other items on the TODO list.

Anyway, talk to you later!