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Post by Spike on Apr 8, 2009 17:55:24 GMT 2
I am using Fony 1.4.0 off the web. A Wikipedia review complained about the lack of documentation, but I found nothing at all confusing. The program is very well-behaved.
There are several .FON files I patched using a text editor, then a custom DOS program. With this technique, it was hard to change the font name and other text inside the file, and impossible to broaden glyphs so that they require more bytes. (Narrowing glyphs was also problematic when Win95 generated larger point sizes.) Fony solves these problems.
When importing these .FON files of mine into Fony (which Windows 95 through XP accepts, but which might violate the .FON spec in any number of ways), the output of Fony makes FONTDISP in Windows 95 divide by zero, though XP accepts it. When importing such a .FON file that contains multiple fonts (which I derived from MS Serif and modified), XP also declares it invalid.
None of this is your fault, though Fony might do a better job of detecting errors in an imported file. A successful workaround was to create a new font, create two instances of Fony, and copy one glyph at a time with Copy and Paste. Tedious!
The only other thing about Fony I'd change is to have the pixel at the cursor position be a color other than black or white, or use a legend that shows where the cursor is AND whether the pixel is set or clear.
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Post by hukka on Apr 11, 2009 17:32:41 GMT 2
Hi, thanks for the review. I'm aware of the problem with Fony generating invalid FON files with multiple fonts. XP is more tolerant of errors in fonts and since XP is all I use, it's kind of hard to be test the validity of fonts I generate. Fixing this is in the TODO list but it's time consuming and tedious to work on it and I have other projects which I prefer to spend my time on, so I only very occasionally touch Fony nowadays. P.S. There's a newer build of Fony at hukka.furtopia.org/projects/fony/test/Fony.exealthough I've forgotten to link to it from the website. It might not help with the invalid fonts created by Fony, but it allows you to copy/paste a whole range of glyphs at once. |
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Post by Spike on Apr 12, 2009 23:49:19 GMT 2
Thank you for your response; I'll try the newer version.
I had another problem with 1.4.0 (again on my Win95 machine, so if the previous comment is on your to-do list, this will be way down below it!). Fony blew up, initially when trying to tab to the FON tab, later when merely using the Open File window. Deleting the Fony information from the Registry didn't fix it, but selecting the "old style file browsing dialogs" did fix it. If this option is necessary for older operating systems, perhaps Fony could detect which OS it is running on and force the decision.
Four personal fonts are now Fony-ized, and I want to Fony-ize my default font (and to import Palatino and apply some personal preferences) but these would be files with multiple fonts and would have to work on both versions of Windows, so I will check back from time to time to see if you make progress on that.
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Post by Spike on Apr 18, 2009 19:22:40 GMT 2
A way to trigger the multiple-font bug: Start FONY, use Open Installed Font, select SERIFE.FON (which contains 6 fonts), and Save, using a temporary filename. Then open that temporary file; Fony is willing to open it, but none of the glyphs, geometry, nor font names is in it. This procedure should be repeatable so you'll know when you've fixed the bug. Thanks again.
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Post by Spike on Apr 21, 2009 14:50:11 GMT 2
And random other comments for when you get around to it:
--I never did figure out how to cut and paste ranges of glyphs with your test version.
--When pasting a glyph of a different width, the Width indicator in Tools doesn't change. Sometimes if you move the cursor to the glyph window, a newly widened glyph may display junk pixels (though they are not stored in the file).
--"Boldify" ought to read "Boldify font" as it works on the whole font, unlike the other options on this pulldown menu.
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Post by hukka on Apr 22, 2009 9:40:53 GMT 2
Hi, finally managed to get around to replying... And random other comments for when you get around to it: --When pasting a glyph of a different width, the Width indicator in Tools doesn't change. Sometimes if you move the cursor to the glyph window, a newly widened glyph may display junk pixels (though they are not stored in the file). Good catch. Will fix this soon. (While testing, I also managed to crash Fony simply by importing Tahoma.ttf - will fix that too.) Answers to the other things are found in changes-140.txt - I guess you missed it? Just select a range of glyphs (using the shift key), click Copy, select glyph to start pasting into, and press Paste. Boldify works on the whole font only if no range is selected. I'll try to do some testing on Win95 - Fony certainly works fine on Win98. I don't know if it makes sense in 2009 to support Win95, though... |
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Post by Spike on Apr 22, 2009 16:04:22 GMT 2
Thanks for your reply! Now here's news (which unfortunately might make you less eager to work more on it)--Some or all of the problems I reported in installing multiple-font files on WinXP may be the fault of XP. A file that fails to show some or all of the fonts--notably, when it replaces a file that had fewer fonts--shows them all after a reboot.
Yes, I did fail to check the TXT file for changes, sorry. But, I finished my six-font adaptation of MS Serif with Fony and am pleased with the results.
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Post by hukka on Apr 22, 2009 23:58:01 GMT 2
Thanks for your reply! Now here's news (which unfortunately might make you less eager to work more on it)--Some or all of the problems I reported in installing multiple-font files on WinXP may be the fault of XP. A file that fails to show some or all of the fonts--notably, when it replaces a file that had fewer fonts--shows them all after a reboot. That's good to know! I reboot so seldom I haven't seen this for myself. Glad you managed to finish your font. Does it work on Win95/98 too? |
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Post by Spike on Apr 23, 2009 1:24:06 GMT 2
The 6-font file "Spik2009" is now installed on two Win95 machines. Indeed, I don't recommend that you spend time ensuring that Fony runs on Win95, and it isn't a problem to run Fony only on WinXP. My general rule is to use the most primitive OS that gets the job done, even DOS.
Ah! the reason I didn't see your updated .TXT file originally is that the Beta you pointed me to (in this forum thread) was just the .EXE, not the entire package. I'll pick up your newest fixes when you make them available.
I was wrong in the first post on this thread--It was not Wikipedia but FreeDownloadManager.org that criticized the level of documentation of Fony. (Again, it didn't bother me.) The only Fony on Wikipedia is a musical band.
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Post by hukka on Apr 26, 2009 15:19:53 GMT 2
Just a quick note - I finally found and fixed the bug that caused all the havoc with sserif.fon and other large FON files. Plus a few more fixes. hukka.furtopia.org/projects/fony/(Oh, and I tested Fony on Windows 95 and had no problems with the file requester or anything else... Maybe you need to get some updates - I think mine was fully updated.) |
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Post by Spike on Apr 26, 2009 16:04:16 GMT 2
Thanks! I've picked up 1.4.0a and the Changes file. Again, my workaround for the Win95 problems is just to use Fony under WinXP--don't know where I'd go for "updates to Win95"! Bad pointers in a file could have accounted for that or many other failures.
I've also browsed your music directory and sent you mail via gmail.
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Post by hukka on Apr 26, 2009 17:09:24 GMT 2
By "updates to Win95" I mean any service packs and other bug fixes from the Microsoft website. (I just downloaded a premade Windows 95 virtual image for Virtual PC and Fony worked fine, heh.) I got your email, I'm just slow at replying  |
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Post by Spike on Apr 27, 2009 23:09:19 GMT 2
Fony 1.4.0a passes the SERIFE.FON failure mode described above. But when I have an SD chip inserted as D:, Fony creates .FNT files in the root directory, one per font. These are presumably temporary files that haven't been deleted. (Why D:?!) The workaround is easy. When D: is not present, Fony works fine; if it creates temp files, I haven't found them yet.
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Post by hukka on Apr 28, 2009 9:47:16 GMT 2
Oops! That was due to some debug code accidentally left in. Sorry.
I'll upload the fixed version later today.
(Normally Fony stores all temporary data in memory, I was just dumping generated FNT resources into separate files so I could see if they were formed correctly.)
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Post by Spike on Apr 28, 2009 15:27:07 GMT 2
Before you post that, here's one for you. While the gray cursor is an excellent solution to the ambiguity in editing, it no longer picks up the Tools/Preferences/Editing setting. I had set Fony so that the left mouse button toggles a pixel, and it never works this way in 1.4.0a. Thanks.
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