> > The problem with creating custom bitmap fonts (as you seem to be doing)
> > is that storing all those characters in every possible font size
> > (especially the larger sizes) will take up enormous amounts of drive
> > space - far more than the 4 Megs used by the TT font file.
No - I am not creating any fonts at all. As I keep saying, my Unicode
implementation can use any fonts at all. If you have a
TrueType font with, say, fonts for A000 to A4CF, then you can load it into
memory using whatever software you have for
doing that, which will load it into memory in steps of 96 or 192 bytes at a
time, into the format which Amiga's graphic.library can use. You can then
either make a simple call to ucode.library or make a simple AREXX command to
put those characters into A000 to A4CF within Ucode's memory. If you often
used the same characters, you could ask ucode.library to save that
range of characters so they could be loaded directly from a diskfile, or
grabbed from disk as needed.
When ucode.library wants to print a character, here is what it does:
suppose you want to print, say, the character 3420
if it is already in memory (which may be because ucode.library grabbed it
from a TT font), then it uses that. Elsewise,
it falls back on grabbing a glyph from my glyph packs. That happens so
quickly, that a whole window full of text can
be loaded on the fly form disk in about 3 seconds. Or, you can pre-load the
most commonly used glyphs into memory,
when a window-full can be displayed in less than a second (running at
50MHz).
(Actually my first plan was to organise suites of 192 characters loaded into
memory along with judicious calling of
graphics.library routines. That was easy to program, but not practical for
various reasons).
You don't have to use my glyph packs at all. They are simply "fall backs" -
glyphs in a small range of sizes, in case you
don't have fonts for all the Unicode range. In the basic size 11 they show
almost all Unicodes very clearly, a little better
than TT fonts do. They are not fonts, or substitutes for fonts, but
fall-backs in case fonts aren't available.
> There is an easy way of avoiding a multi-megabyte download.
>
> Grab a copy of Microsoft Office, extract the fonts from the CDs. Or go
> buy a font CD from any DTP vendor.
Isn't that slightly illegal?
>
> Can you do either with ShillitoFonts? :)
>
No because there *aren't* any Shillito fonts. But if you want my glyph
packs, I daresay by now they are out on Aminet
disks which Schatzruhe put out. I know of several other disks that have come
out with my glyph packs on them.
Freeware, all legal and above board.
Anyway, notwithstanding all the above, let me say this. I have nearly
finsihed UText, so there will be a full unicode capable
text editor for the Amiga, for anyone who wants one. There will not be ARexx
on the first edition, but I will soon put out a second edition, with ARexx.
THat will mean that you can use it as a plug in to Voyager, to see the plain
text of any
web page that is not in Latin script, such as Japanese, Korean, etc. UText
can already do that just fine, by saving the
plaintext HTML and loading it into UText - UText can strip the HTML elements
and expand out any &....; things, and
translate hertitage encodings like Shift-JIS. When UText has ARexx, it can
be done as a plug in, without needing to save
and load the HTML.
If anyone wants to use UText, they will be able, free of charge. If they
don't, that's cool. I wrote it for myself, so I could see all languages on
the Amiga, and I can now do that. And I put it on the Aminet so anyone else
who wants to do so can too, at no cost to themselves. Providing my mental
health holds up, I should finish UText by the end of the year.
By the way Don, yes it does do word counts. There is some confusion about
what a "word" is in some languages e.g. in Chinese, but I think I've got
that all sorted out, and the menu allows you to find the total words in
memory, and also the words in whatever range of text you have hilighted
(chosen) if any. Thank you for your encouraging remarks.
Why do some people have such sour attitudes, always ready to find fault? The
Amiga to me is a hobby. Just as there are Veteran car enthusiasts who love
their Rolls Silver Ghost and say it was the most enjoyable car ever made,
though it is now
obsolete, so I think the Amiga was the most enjoyable operating system ever
made. It's true, that time has passed us by, but
so what? I like programming it, and seeing what it can do. I feel somewhat
chuffed that I have got the Amiga to display Unicode, and you won't rob me
of that.
I would have finished UText some time ago, except I have been battling with
clinical depression. To quote Matt Sealy
It's cheaper to get another SIMM. If you can't get more memory,
tough shit, frankly. The world moved on from 8MB machines.
Yes, Matt, it has, but why finish there? The world has also passed on from
the Amiga OS, and I daresay that Apple, Unix and Linux are destined todie
some time in the next few years. Although my Amiga 1200 still works, I also
run Amiga forever where I can have as much memory as I like. First, spiteful
remarks don't help my depression. Second, what a strange way to use the
acronym SIMM. Third, the world has moved on from lots of things, but I don't
have to move with it. "tough shit", yes I know all about that.
You know what I dread? That some day they'll build a computer that can
think. Then, we'll *all* be obsolete. And those bastards at Microsoft will
control all the robots. Then the world will move on from *us*. They'll have
got themsleves another simian. Don't worry, I'm just depressed.
