--- = Next Page = Next Line = Quit This text can be printed with a word processor, or by typing the following command in a Shell window: Copy PFM2:ReadMe PRT: --- Cloanto Personal Fonts Maker 2 The Personal Fonts Maker 2 has been acclaimed as "the best bitmapped fonts editor for the Amiga" by enthusiasts and professionals from all over the world. It is the leading tool for handling fonts in up to 256 colours (no size limit, RTG compatible). Among others, special functions for anti-aliasing (even using an Amiga vector font as a point of departure) and right-to-left fonts are provided. This makes it an ideal companion to video applications, and a must in the titling environment. This disk contains a complimentary release of Personal Fonts Maker version 2.0 for the readers of Amiga Shopper. The main program is identical to the latest commercial version. Some files (data files, support programs, Amiga system resources, etc.) have in part been changed to fit on a single disk. Two professional colour fonts from Kara Computer Graphics are also included. At the same time as this cover disk appears, a new package is being released by Cloanto: The Kara Collection CD-ROM. A description of the CD-ROM is enclosed, while a reader offer appears on the same issue of Amiga Shopper. For more information, please contact Cloanto or the local distributors named at the end of this file. To take advantage of product upgrades, don't forget to mail the registration card which comes with each original product. E-mail registration forms are also enclosed on the disks. Short Instructions The Personal Fonts Maker 2 may be launched with a double-click on the PFM2 Workbench icon, on any Amiga with 1 Mbyte of RAM (ideally, Chip RAM). Colour fonts are supported from version 2 (or higher) of the Amiga operating system. Amiga fonts are normally accessed through the "FONTS:" assigned path. The PFM2 disk includes the "AssignFonts" utility to reassign "FONTS:". During your work with the cover disk this utility can be used to reassign the path from "SYS:Fonts" to "PFM2:Fonts" and vice versa. It is very easy to explore the Personal Fonts Maker 2 by choosing from the variety of menus and gadgets. It is recommended to make a backup copy of the disk before experimenting with functions which write data. The Personal Fonts Maker 2 is a result of Personal Paint development applied to fonts. This means that many users of Personal Paint will immediately be familiar with the toolbar and the main functions of PFM2. Amiga fonts are loaded and saved with the Load Amiga Font and Save Amiga Font commands in the Project Menu. The format of the font (size, number of colours) can be changed from the Font Format requester, which can be displayed from the Settings menu. The colour palette can be edited by pressing

, which is equivalent to selecting Edit in the Colour/Palette menu. Most gadgets on the toolbar react differently depending on whether they are selected with the left or with the right mouse button (which in most cases activates the tool settings requester). The drawing tools can be selected in the upper or lower part to activate different effects (e.g. rectangular outlines or full boxes). There are a few special gadgets which are not found in painting programs. The top five gadgets are: - Font - Character - X Size - Space - Kerning All five gadgets can be selected with the left mouse button to increase the value, and with the right button to decrease it. The Font gadget allows to select the font environment. PFM2 has two working environments which can contain independent fonts. Another use of the two environments could be to store a font in one environment, and use the other as a storage area for clips. It is possible to load an image and store it in a character of the font. The Character gadget allows the user to move forward and backward in the font. Characters can also be selected by clicking on the "??" gadget, which activates the quick character selection window. Amiga fonts can store up to 256 characters. The character code 256 is reserved for the  undefined character, as specified by the Amiga font format. The horizontal size of the character can be controlled by the X Size value. The minimum size is 1 (one column of dots), while the grid can be as large as defined by the Font Format settings. This parameter does not need to include additional spaces at the left or right of the character. The Space and Kerning parameters should be used for this purpose. To disable unused characters, use the On/Off gadget. The Space parameter defines the logical horizontal size of the character, starting from the beginning of the bitmap. The value associated with this parameter is usually slightly higher than the X Size parameter. This parameter affects the placement of the following character in the text. The Kerning parameter (also called "Left Offset") determines the starting position of the character when it is printed. The parameter specifies an offset from the position immediately following the last character which was printed or displayed. By default this value is left to 0. Negative values are sometimes used, especially in handwriting effects. The Space and Kerning parameters do not affect the bitmap of the character. Instead, they are used to control the horizontal spacing between the characters when several characters are grouped together to print, display or output text. The two gadgets which appear under the Brush tool are the Memory tool and the Chop tool. Memory can be selected with the left button to copy the current character (and spacing information) to an internal buffer, and with the right button to paste it. Chop narrows the character grid, cutting off empty columns. Chop can be selected with the right mouse button to center the character without removing empty columns. The other gadgets are used to move and flip the character. The little arrows between the toolbar and the character editing box indicate up to four reference points, which are useful when designing new fonts. These can be set by selecting a position with the left mouse button in the reference point area and by pressing a function key between and . The box to the left of the Grid Colour tool indicates whether the font has a remappable foreground colour. Some applications can change this colour to change the font's appearance in a particular environment. To define the colour, just click on the box and then pick a colour from the palette. To disable this feature, click on the box and then click anywhere outside the palette. The Reverse Direction and Flip Font items in the Attributes Menu are useful when working with right-to-left fonts (also used for video titling effects). The first option only changes the spacing and kerning information, while the second one flips the character images. Tutorial 1: How to Create a Colour Font in Ten Minutes The "Fonts" drawer on the cover disk includes a colour font named "TenMinutes", which you can create in a few minutes by following these instructions. Select Open Amiga Font from the Project menu. From the list of fonts which are included with the Amiga, choose CGTimes. This is a vector font which can easily be scaled to any size. Type "55s" in the string gadget to the right of the gadget with the font name. The "s" means that the system should scale the font to a size of 55, rather than picking the font with the closest size (from the pre-scaled bitmaps which are available). Press the "Bold A" gadget to make the font bold. If you do not have this font, pick any black and white font with a comparable size. Bold fonts are preferred in this example, because the characters will be filled. Select Font Format from the Settings requester. Move the Colours slider to 8. The font now has 8 colours. Select Colour/Palette/Load and load the "TenMinutes.col" palette which is included on the cover disk. Try to set Settings/Grid/Dots to see if you prefer to work with this option, which affects how the characters are displayed in the editing box. On the toolbar, click on the Fill tool with the right mouse button. This will display the Fill Area Parameters requester. Make sure that the Fill Type cycle gadget indicates "Gradient". Click on the gadget with the circle until it shows four arrows inside the circle (Shape gradient type). Click on the other gadget (to its left) so that it shows an arrow with four boxes (Manual gradient mode). Without leaving the requester, click on the second colour in the toolbar palette area (the pale yellow box, to the right of the black box) with the left mouse button. Select the last colour (brown) with the right mouse button. Press Proceed. Now the fill tool can be applied to the characters of the font. Click (with the left mouse button) anywhere on each character. If you select the Settings/Dynamic View option you will be able to see how the changes affect a sample of text. You created a colour font! Tutorial 2: How to Create an Anti-Aliased Font This example will show how to anti-alias a font designed for rendering of black text on white background, where intermediate shades of gray are used to create the illusion of a higher resolution. This effect is frequently used in video effects, and can be very useful to preserve the quality of small text when working with a paint program. The program option that will be used in this example is called Colour Average Resize. Activate it from the Settings/Stretch menu. In general, to create an anti-aliased font you need to load an Amiga (possibly vector) font, add intermediate shades of gray or colour to the palette and then reduce the font size. The more colours you add, the better the result, and the smaller you can make the font with respect to the original. In this example we will load a font twice the size of the anti-aliased font that we want to create. Following the instructions of the previous lesson, load CGTimes 50, or any other font having a similar size. This font does not need to be bold, as in the previous example. From the Font Format requester (Setting menu) set the number of colours to 4. Now display the Edit Palette requester (by pressing

, or from the Colours/Palette menu) and arrange the four colours in a way that white appears first and black last. The other two colours should be intermediate shades of gray. If you did not change the default program options, this palette can be created by swapping the first colour with the third, and the second with the fourth. To create the intermediate grays, click on the first colour (which should be white), then select either one of the Spread gadgets (marked with I or II) and click on the last colour (which should be black). Now you should have light gray characters on a white background. We want them to be black on white. In the palette under the toolbar, select the black box with the left mouse button to make it the foreground colour. Then select the light gray box with the right button to make it the background colour. In the Colour menu, select Change Background to Foreground. Now the font characters should be black on white. Display the Font Format requester again. Whatever values are displayed in the Font size gadgets, divide them by 2. For example, if the values are 44 and 50, replace them with 22 and 25, respectively. Select Proceed. Before converting the font, the program will display a requester indicating the new size. Leave the checkmark on Stretch and select Proceed. As you can see, you created an anti-aliased font! Colour fonts and Personal Paint If you have Personal Paint at hand, you can easily test your own colour fonts, as well as the two Kara fonts which are on the disk. The KaraChiselSerif and KaraGranite fonts include capital letters, digits and punctuation signs. In Personal Paint, select the Text tool on the toolbar (the "a"-gadget) with the right mouse button. In the font requester, type "PFM2:Fonts" in the Path string gadget. You should see a new list of fonts which includes the fonts on the cover disk. Just click on the font names for a preview. To use the fonts with the best colours, remember to select the "Colour/Palette/From Font" menu item. The "Personal" Font Personal Paint and the Personal Fonts Maker Colour Extensions normally share the same Personal font for their user interface. The font itself has been upgraded a few times. On a system where different versions of these programs are installed, it may happen that one of the programs expects an older version of the font to be available. While minor changes are usually backwards compatible, if any characters appear to be incorrectly displayed it is sufficient to remove the font from the system "FONTS:" directory. All versions of Personal Paint and PFM2 also search for the font in their local directories, where the font is copied during automatic installation. If you are still using Topaz 8 for the Workbench icon texts, you may want to try Personal 8 as a more readable replacement. New from Cloanto: The Kara Collection CD-ROM The Complete Collection  A professional and unique collection of fonts, backgrounds and tools for special effects in pictures, animations, titling and presentations. All items for solo or combined use. The CD-ROM contains 80 ColourFonts (including effects like brick, glass, chrome, chisel, etc.), 5 AnimFonts (handwriting, rotating characters, static wipes, sparkles, etc.), hundreds of alternate colour palettes, Starfields (moving stars seen from different perspectives), textures and backgrounds (granite, marble, sand-stone, wood, etc.), the Personal Fonts Maker software and an anim-brush upgrade for Personal Paint. New from Cloanto: Personal Suite CD-ROM Quality Amiga CD-ROM  This CD-ROM includes Personal Paint and Personal Write from Cloanto, SBase 4 Personal (from Oxxi), Personal Fonts Maker 1 & 2 (Cloanto), 27 professional Kara colour fonts (Kara Computer Graphics), Cloanto's DirDiff (file synchronization and replication software) and PNG Toolkit, plus ½ Gbyte of pictures, animations, stereograms, stereogram animations, Amiga fonts, printer downloadable fonts and texts. The CD-ROM contains no public domain or shareware software. The commercial titles are the latest versions available, with full AmigaGuide manuals (English and German, with some titles also in Italian and French). Famous Amiga artists like Jim Sachs participated with a selection of their best Amiga art. Also included, a compilation of animations by Eric Schwartz, for the first time in IFF ANIM format. The CD-ROM is packaged in an elegant metal box. Cloanto Personal Paint Personal Paint is a powerful and intuitive paint, image processing, animation and 24-bit printing package. Employ stunning effects like emboss, water-colours, transparencies and stereograms (as in "Magic Eye"), while virtual memory frees precious Chip RAM by using other storage resources! Plus: support of RTG graphics cards, different file formats (IFF, PNG, PCX, encrypted, C source code, DataTypes, etc.), nine brushes or anim-brushes, two independent working environments, multi-level Undo/Redo, animation storyboard, Bézier curves, autoscroll painting, professional colour reduction, superior text editor, colour fonts, PostScript output, screen grabber... Distributors For more information please contact the local distributors listed here. Great Britain:  Digita International Limited Tel +44 1395 270273 Black Horse House Fax +44 1395 268893 GB - Exmouth EX8 1JL E-mail sales@digita.demon.co.uk Meridian Software Distribution Ltd. Tel +44 181 5433500 East House Fax +44 181 5432255 East Road Industrial Estate GB - London SW19 1AH North America:  Software Hut, Inc. Tel +1 610 586-5701 Folcroft East Business Park Fax +1 610 586-5706 313 Henderson Drive USA - Sharon Hill, PA 19079 SoftWood, Inc. Tel +1 602 431-0949 7776 Pointe Parkway West Fax +1 602 431-8361 Suite 270 E-mail 75300.670@compuserve.com USA - Phoenix, AZ 85044 Kara Computer Graphics Tel +1 310 578-9177 2554 Lincoln Boulevard E-mail KaraCG@aol.com Suite 1010 USA - Marina del Rey, CA 90291 German Area:  Casablanca Multimedia GmbH Tel +49 234 72035 Wiemelhauser Straße 247 a Fax +49 234 72060 D - 44799 Bochum Belgium: Amiga City - G.E.S. Tel +32 2 7366111 Avenue du Price Heritier, 176 Fax +32 2 7722401 B - 1200 Bruxelles The Netherlands:  Barlage Computer Hardware Tel +31 45 425881 Kaalheidersteenweg 262 Fax +31 45 424411 NL - 6467 AH Kerkrade Danemark:  Epic Data Tel +45 59 93 10 25 Jernbanevej 11 Fax +45 59 93 11 48 DK - 4500 Nykøbing Sjælland Sweden:  ProComp Tel +46 472 70845 Box 46 Fax +46 472 71680 S - 340 36 Moheda Bbs +46 472 71270 Finland:  Lincware Computers Ltd Tel +358 50 557 3696 Lovkullankuja 3 Fax +358 11 205 415 FIN - 10300 Karjaa France:  Cuda Informatique sarl Tel +33 1 42 46 47 48 31, rue de Trevise Fax +33 1 42 46 47 01 F - 75009 Paris Vitepro Tel +33 1 46 38 17 15 42, rue Raymond Marcheron Fax +33 1 45 25 71 78 F - 92170 Vanves Phoenix-DP Tel +33 59 82 95 00 BP 801 Fax +33 59 82 95 00 F - 64008 Pau Cedex Quartz Informatique Tel +33 50 52 83 31 2 bis, avenue de Brogny Fax +33 50 52 83 31 F - 74000 Annecy Greece:  Multi-RAK Tel +49 234 9489411 Karnassiotis & Radouniklis GBR Fax +49 234 9489444 Prinz-Regent-Straße 70 D - 44795 Bochum Australia and New Zealand:  Amadeus Computers Pty Ltd Tel +61 2 651-1711 Suite 1, 534 Old Northern Road Fax +61 2 651-1710 Round Corner NSW 2158 Australia Italy:  Db-Line srl Tel +39 332 767270 Viale Rimembranze 26/C Fax +39 332 767244 I - 21024 Biandronno VA Bbs +39 332 767329 E-mail info@dbline.it Italy (OEM):  CTO spa Tel +39 51 753133 Via Piemonte 7/f Fax +39 51 753418 I - 40069 Zola Predosa BO Cloanto Cloanto Italia srl Tel +39 432 545902 PO Box 118 Fax +39 432 609051 33100 Udine Bbs +39 432 545905 Italy E-mail info@cloanto.it Personal Fonts Maker 2 is Copyright © 1990-1994 Cloanto Italia srl. All rights reserved. Parts are licensed or used with permission from third parties. No part of this disk may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or translated into any language or computer language, in any form or by any means, magnetic, optical, electronic, or otherwise without the prior written permission of Cloanto. Cloanto and the Cloanto logo are registered trademarks, and Personal Paint is a trademark of Cloanto. Amiga is a registered trademark of ESCOM AG. All other trademarks, property of their respective owners, are acknowledged. Please refer to the user guides of the products mentioned here for additional information.