bgi28fnt.zip release 1.0 6/3/95 readme file OVERVIEW Thank you for trying the Microcosm BGI Fonts. These fonts are a share-ware product. You may use them for 10 days as a trial, after which you must register them to continue using them. For $24.50 (plus shipping and handling), registered users receive 245 BGI fonts. That's only 10 cents per fonts! See REGISTRATION below. These fonts are designed for use with the Borland Graphics Interface library supplied with several of their language products. The fonts supplied are each designed to be attractive in one size -- they cannot be scaled up without breaking apart. This tuning makes it possible to have readable fonts at quite small sizes. The sizes supported range from 6 to 12 pixels high (measuring from the base to the top of a letter like X). MICROCOSM Microcosm offers a variety of font products besides BGI fonts. These may be of interest to you or your company if you are employed. - outline fonts with C rendering code for commercial DOS and UNIX applications; sold with source code and royalty-free font redistribution license - fonts matching these BGI fonts compatible with the above C rendering code - Type-1 fonts for UNIX users sold retail, with quantity discounts, site licenses, or with royalty-free redistribution license. E-mail wright@siggraph.org describing your situation and you needs for details on any of the above packages. THE FONTS The font family supplied is visually similar to Helvetica (a trademark of Lineotype-Hell). There are 4 variants -- regular, bold, bold-italic, and italic. The 7 sizes of the 4 variants yield 28 fonts. Registered users will receive 245 BGI fonts. See below for further details. In smaller sizes, regular and bold may be indistinguishable for many glyphs, but the fonts are supplied anyway for completeness and ease of use. The font names have the following form where X represents the size: H--X a family of Helvetica-like fonts in different sizes HB-X a family of Helvetica-bold-like fonts in different sizes HBIX a family of Helvetica-bold-italic-like fonts in different sizes HI-X a family of Helvetica-italic-like fonts in different sizes X is the height of a capital letter in pixels in hex -- 6 through C. VIEWING THE FONTS The command "demo" will run the demo program four times, each run showing a succession of screens with each size font. The first run will show all the sizes of the normal fonts, the second run will show the sizes of the bold fonts, the third run will show the bold-italic fonts, and the last run will show the italic fonts. Separate runs are required because of limits in the BGI library explained below. USAGE Consult your Borland language Library Reference manual for full details on using user fonts. The enclosed program minidemo.c shows a minimal program that uses a non-Borland font. The additions for accessing a user font in the C language are: fontHandle = installuserfont("HB-A"); settextstyle(fontHandle, HORIZ_DIR, 0); setusercharsize(1, 1, 1, 1); Older versions of Borland Library Reference documentation say the argument to installuserfont is the path of the font. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Later documents describe this argument as the font name, which is limited to four characters. This means the font must be in the directory where the application is run. (Borland's fonts can be stored in the BGI directory because their names are hard-coded inside the BGI library.) The Borland documentation says up to 20 fonts may be used, but their fonts use up about half of this limit. Thus you can only use about 10 of the Microcosm fonts in one application. TROUBLE SHOOTING Also included is a font, SIMA, that is an exact copy of Borland's SIMP font with the file name and internal name changed. By testing your situation with the SIMA font, you can see if you have a logistical problem, in which case it will also fail with SIMA, or there is some sort of problem with a Microcosm font, in which case the Microcosm font will fail and the SIMA font will not. Hopefully, you will not experience this! REGISTRATION By registering, you will receive 245 fonts. They include 28 variations (as with the included Helvetica-like font) for fonts visually similar to: - Avant Garde - Bookman - Courier - Helvetica (this is the same set included in the share-ware version) - Helvetica Narrow - New Century Schoolbook - Palatino - Times They also include 7 sizes of fonts visually similar to: - Symbol - Zapf Chancery Medium Italic - Zapf Dingbats (Many of the above names are registered trademarks of various companies.) To examine all 245 of the fonts, view 245fonts.gif with some appropriate viewer. Please use the following order form: +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Order from for Microcosm BGI Fonts | | | | I wish to license/upgrade _____ copy/copies of the latest release | | of the Microcosm BGI fonts. I have enclosed $24.50. | | | | I have also enclosed extra $5.00 for shipping and handling. | | | | Name ___________________________________________________________ | | | | Company (if applicable) ________________________________________ | | | | Address ________________________________________________________ | | | | City _______________________________ State ______ Zip ________ | | | | Country _____________________ | | | | I prefer: _____ 3-1/2" disk; _____ 5-1/4" disk | | | | For my records, please try to answer the following questions: | | | | * CPU Type: Manufacturer/Model __________________________________ | | | | * Borland Language Product ______________________________________ | | | | * I got the share-ware package from _____________________________ | | | | * I primarily use the fonts for: ________________________________ | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ Please mail the form and payment to: Tom Wright Microcosm 819 Devon Court San Diego, CA 92109 619-488-4462 619-488-3087 fax wright@siggraph.org LEGAL STUFF These fonts are the exclusive property of Tom Wright and rights to use all or part of them in any form is only issued under a prearranged license agreement. The fonts form can be used temporarily without a license, but only for the purpose of evaluating the fonts. The share-ware package can only be disseminated in whole without the prior written approval of Tom Wright. For licensees, these fonts are licensed for use on one CPU at a time. No title to and ownership of the fonts is hereby transferred. The information in these fonts is subject to change without notice. -- end --