FontFX6
-------
 Data Store Software 1997
                 
FontFX is a utility to create a drawing of a
string using outline font designs. A number of 
special effects are available to modify the 
result; these include colours, shadows, rotation
and distortion. The finished product is a
Draw-format file, which is ideal for use with
desktop publishing software.

NOTE: Version 6.00 (and later versions) of FontFX
no longer support RISC OS 2. If you still have
this earlier version of the operating system, you
have two choices: you can obtain RISC OS 3, or
version 5.07 of FontFX, both of which are
available from The Data Store at the address shown
in the Manual in the root directory of the FontFX6
Program Disc.

How it works
------------
The Acorn Outline Font Manager stores the 
definition of its characters as a sequence of 
coordinates linked by straight lines and curves,
i.e. an outline. This is the same method of
storing a drawing as is used by the Draw module,
which is the heart of the !Draw application, and
which is used by many other applications to 
reproduce line drawings. It is a relatively simple
process, therefore, to convert the definition of a
character from an outline font into a 'path' (a
sequence of lines and curves) compatible with the
Draw module. Once these 'paths' are packaged into
a file, the file can be saved, or transferred
directly into another application. During the
conversion process, the 'paths' can be
transformed, that is, rotated, scaled, duplicated
(shadowed) or otherwise distorted, and the fill
and outline colours selected.

How to use FontFX
-----------------
When you run FontFX, an icon will appear on the
RISC OS Desktop iconbar. Clicking MENU whilst
pointing at this icon brings up a small 'icon bar
menu' giving the means of quitting the 
application, and some information about the 
program itself. Clicking SELECT opens the main
control window for FontFX. This is divided into a
number of panels; at the top, a writeable icon to
hold the string of characters you want converted -
the maximum number of characters is 250; under
this is an icon showing the name of the outline
font that will be used to define the characters.
To the right is an area which lets you select the
fill colour(s) for the characters in your string.
Below are panels dealing with outline colour and
thickness, font size, arc or circle effects,
rotation, rippling, column,  shadows, stencils and
growing and shrinking. 

Depending on your personal preference, there may
be a 'toolbox' attached to the left-hand side of
the main control window. This has icons which
create and display the drawing, create and open a
save box for the drawing, open a save box for the
control window settings and finally reset the
control window to normal settings. Whilst your
mouse pointer is within the main control window,
clicking MENU will normally produce the 'main
menu' which duplicates the toolbox functions and
allows you to switch the toolbox on and off. The
only exceptions to this are when the mouse pointer
is above the fontname icon (in which case the font
menu appears) or the stencil size icon (in which
case the stencil size menu appears).

The minimum amount of work you have to do to 
create a drawing is to type in some text and 
click on 'Create' in the main menu, or on the
'Create' (eye) button in the toolbox, or on the
'Save' (disc) button in the toolbox, or by
pressing 'F3' whilst the caret is in the text
icon. The resulting drawing will have the default
settings shown in the control window whenever you
first run FontFX: normally, this means the font
will be Trinity Medium, coloured black, with no
outline, X and Y font size 72pt and using no other
special effects, but it is possible to customise
your copy of FontFX to start up (i.e. default to)
other settings if you wish. For details of how to
use the special effects, or alter any of the other
settings, see the following sections. 

When you click on 'Create', there will be a short
pause whilst FontFX does its work, and then a new
window will appear, within which is your created
drawing. If the drawing is satisfactory you can
then either save it to disc or transfer it
straight to another application. To do this, bring
up the 'preview menu' by clicking MENU within the
preview window and slide across 'Save drawing' to
open a traditional 'save box' containing an icon
to represent your drawing. To save your drawing
onto disc, drag the icon into a directory viewer,
or type in a pathname in the writeable area under
the icon and then click on 'OK'. If you want to
transfer it to another application, drag the icon
to that application. A special case is !Draw
itself: if you want to transfer the drawing to
!Draw, all you have to do is click on 'OK' WITHOUT
entering a pathname. Incidentally, you can also do
all of this by sliding across 'Save' in the 'main
menu', which opens a submenu: this contains the
further option 'Drawing', and if you slide across
that, the 'save box' appears as described above.

A quick note: if you have typed in your string and
want to change letters from upper to lower case,
or vice versa, you can do this quickly by
positioning the caret before the character you
want to change and pressing CTRL-S.

Fonts
----- 
The default font is normally Trinity.Medium, but
you can use the designs of any outline font in
your possession. To change the font, bring up the
'font menu' by clicking on the menu button to the
right of the font name icon, or by clicking MENU
over the font name icon itself. By doing this, a
list of all the fonts on your system will appear.
Just click SELECT or ADJUST on the desired font,
and its name will appear in the control window,
displayed in the font itself. If you click with
ADJUST, the menu will remain on the screen, so you
can keep selecting different fonts to see what
they look like. Note that it may take a little
time to display the text string, as the
definitions of the characters have to be read 
from a font file on disc unless the font
definition is already held in the computer's font
cache. If you have a lot of fonts, this process
will be speeded up by having a large font cache
(memory size permitting). In case the font name is
obscured in the control window, the currently
selected font is always ticked in the font menu.
                    
Font Size
---------
The size and shape of the drawing you create are
determined by the settings of font size. These can
be set within the range 1 to 999 in points. The X
and Y sizes can be altered separately: a larger X
size than Y size results in characters that are
wider than they normally are for their height,
whereas a larger Y size than X size makes the
characters taller than normal. Although you can
change the size of your drawing, to get the best
resolution you should keep the size as high as
practicable - remember that all DTP packages
rescale to fit a frame in any case. To change the
sizes, click on the arrow icons on alongside the
box that shows the current setting. Clicking
SELECT on the up arrow increases the size, whilst
ADJUST decreases it. On the down arrow, SELECT
decreases and ADJUST increases. If you want to
lock the two sizes together, click on the 'Make
Y=X' option icon: this will force the Y size to be
equal to the X size, and changing either one will
alter both together. The arrows increment or
decrement the size in varying steps: if the
current setting is 1-32, the change is in single
points; if the current setting is 32-128, the
change is in steps of 8 points; if the current
setting is 128 or more, the change is in steps of
32 points. Another way of changing the sizes is by
typing in a value - first click in the X- or
Y-size icons, so that the caret appears there,
then type in a value. If you type in a value which
doesn't correspond to one you could obtain using
the arrows, and subsequently use the arrows, the
first click on an arrow will change the setting to
the nearest value normally obtainable, e.g. if you
had typed in 67 and clicked down, the new setting
would be 64. Note that you can 'by-pass' the Y=X
option if you type a value directly into either
box, but as soon as you click on one of the
arrows, the Y size will be made equal to the X
size again. Pressing 'Return' or 'Page Up' or
'Page Down' or the up or down cursor keys moves
the caret from the X size icon to the Y size icon,
and vice versa.

Outline and Fill Colours and the Rainbow Effect
-----------------------------------------------
Normal outline font characters have a black fill
colour and no outline. These are the normal
default settings in FontFX too. You can change
either of these settings to any of sixteen million
available colours, or have no fill, or no outline
colour at all (but you must have at least one of
them set). To change the colours, you click on the
box showing the currently selected colour to open
a 'Colour Picker Dialogue Box'. Here you can
select a colour from the 'colour cube', or by
dragging up and down the levels of red, green and
blue in the colour, or by typing in percentage
values of red, green and blue. You can also use
CMYK or HSV models for choosing colours (only
recommended for the knowledgable or the
adventurous!), or even restrict your choice to one
of the 16 desktop palette colours, which appear in
a grid above the OK button. As long as the outline
colour is not sent to 'none', you can select
'none' as the fill colour, and vice versa: in
other words, only one of them can be 'none'.

A further option for fill colour is to choose the
'Rainbow' effect. In this case, each letter will
have a different fill colour, in a sequence that
can be defined by the user. If this option is 
selected, you cannot manually alter the fill
colour - if you want to do this, switch off the
rainbow effect. Note also that switching on
rainbow will disable the stencil option (see
below), and vice versa. To alter the sequence of
colours in the rainbow effect, click over the fill
colour icon in the main control window (which will
become 'stripy' as soon as the rainbow option is
selected). Instead of the colour picker, a window
will appear showing the current rainbow sequence.
If you just want to alter the colours in the
sequence, click on the appropriate colour icon to
open a colour picker box. If you want to extend or
shorten the sequence, click on the up or down
arrow beside the box telling you how many colours
are in the sequence: this can be from a minimum of
2 to a maximum of 16. If you reduce the number of
colours, the appropriate icons in the sequence
will be greyed out: if you extend the sequence,
the appropriate icons will be reactivated. Note
that when you save either default settings or a
script file (about which more below), the rainbow
sequence will be saved in the file.

Outline Width
-------------
If you select an outline colour, you can also 
specify how thick the outline should be. There 
are five settings, ranging from 1 (very thin) to 5
(very thick). You alter the current setting using
the arrow icons in the same way as described above
for font size and colours. If you produce a
drawing with font sizes 72pt, and transfer it to
!Draw, the outline width settings correspond to
the line width settings in the !Draw menu, i.e. 1
(FontFX) = 'Thin' (Draw), 2 = 0.25 points, 3 = 0.5
points, 4 = 1 point and 5 = 2 points. If you
create your drawing to a different size, the point
width of the outline will be scaled accordingly,
e.g. font size 144pt, FontFX outline width 5,
gives !Draw line width 4 points.

Shadow and Border Effects
-------------------------
An attractive special effect can be a shadow of 
your string behind the characters themselves. 
This effect is activated by clicking on one of 
the 'Shadow' icons with SELECT. A 'wall' shadow 
can be imagined by shining a light at your 
characters from immediately in front of them, 
creating a shadow on a wall behind. A 'floor'
shadow is created by shining a light from above,
creating a shadow on the floor behind. The 'floor'
shadow is most effective on a string which has not
been rotated, sloped or leant. A '3D' shadow is
created by having a smaller version of the string
in the background, which is joined to the
full-size string in the foreground. The shadow
colour can be selected much as outline and fill
colours are, except that if no shadow option is
selected, the shadow colour will be shown greyed
out, and you will not be able to change this: as
soon as you select one of the shadow options, the
shadow colour will be restored to the correct
colour, and you will then be able to change it. If
you subsequently switch off the shadow option, the
shadow colour will automatically revert to being
greyed out. In a 3D shadow, the shadow colour is
the colour of the rear of the 3D effect, with the
intermediate parts blending from there to the fill
colour of the foreground. One particularly nice
effect is to have no outline colour, fill colour
white and a wall shadow: try it and see! You can
also set the direction in which you want your
shadow to fall, and the distance (wall/3D) or
length (floor) of the shadow. You can alter the
direction by typing in a number, by clicking on
the up and down arrows or by clicking on the
compass. To alter the distance/length, drag the
slider left or right.

The Border effect adds an outline to all the
characters in your string. If no outline colour is
selected, this border will be the same colour as
the fill colour of the characters, with a gap 
between the border and the character. The colour
of this gap can be determined by the user, but if
you choose the same gap colour as fill colour,
an alternative gap colour will be used. This is
shown in a triangular flash across the icon which
shows the normal gap colour. If you
select an outline colour, the border will have
this colour. Note that you cannot select the
border effect at the same time as the stencil
effect. The outline width setting will affect
the thickness of the border and the gap.

Stencil Effect
--------------
This creates a solid area with the characters of
your string 'cut out' in the middle. The colour of
the solid area (the 'frame') is the 'fill' colour
you have selected in the control window (which
means that you cannot select the rainbow option at
the same time as the stencil option). Should you
select an outline colour, this will appear around
the characters but not around the frame. If you
import a drawing like this into !Draw and place it
on top of another object, you will find that the
other object shows through the characters of your
string: in other words, the characters are
transparent. This would allow you to create some
interesting effects - for example, if you create
your drawing with a white fill colour, and place
the created drawing on top of a repetitive
pattern, you will create pattern-filled characters
on an apparantly white background. Alternatively,
you might use a desktop publishing package to type
inside the created characters. The size of the
frame can be altered by clicking on the menu button
next to the current size icon, or by clicking the
mouse MENU button over the size icon, and selecting
an alternative size from the menu that appears. 

Ripple and Jiggle
-----------------
Normally, all the characters in your drawing will
be sitting on an invisible baseline which is
straight. The ripple and jiggle effects alter the
baseline, making it ripple (i.e. a regular
deviation from character to character like a wave)
or jiggle (an irregular deviation, chosen at
random for each character). Either of these
effects can be chosen by clicking on the
appropriate icon with SELECT. To deselect one of
these effects, either select the other, or click
with ADJUST. Note that the column and circle
options described below cannot be selected at the
same time as ripple or jiggle, but stencil,
rotate, slope, lean and arc can be.

Column
------
The column option sets your string in a vertical
column, each character placed beneath the previous
one. You cannot select column at the same time as
ripple, jiggle, circle, rotate, slope, lean or
arc. Beware of bizarre effects if you select a
floor shadow with a column - not recommended! You
should also remember that 'columns' look best with
'capital' letters - no pun intended!

Circle
------
This effect makes the characters of your string 
follow the circumference of an imaginary and 
invisible circle. There are three versions of the
circle effect: a clockwise circle, an anti-clockwise
circle, and a bi-directional circle, where the 
string will be split into two parts at the nearest 
word break to the middle, with the first half laid
out clockwise and the remainder anti-clockwise. 
In each case, the point around the circle that the
text starts from can be set using the angle compass.
The default direction is clockwise, and this is the
option that will be set when you first select
'Circle'. You can also select an optional shape which
will be drawn inside the text circle: this can be
either a circle, a square, a diamond or a
five-pointed star. Finally, you can choose to have
the spaces between words replaced by a dot. Note
that neither stencil, ripple, jiggle, column,
rotate, slope, lean nor arc can be selected at the
same time as circle. WARNING: not all fonts are
suitable for use in a circle, particularly when
you are mixing upper and lower case characters in
your string, so be prepared to have to select an
alternative font if the drawing you create does
not look right.

Arc
---
Arc is similar to a circle effect, except that the
text only follows a part of a circle and not a
whole circle. The number of degrees of this arc is
given in the angle box. Obviously, you cannot have
an arc of 0, so if the angle is set to 0 when you
select 'arc', it will be automatically changed to
45. Whilst 'arc' is selected, you will not be
able to set the angle to 0. You can alter the
angle by typing in a number, by clicking on the up
and down arrows or by clicking on the compass.
Remember that in order to fit all the characters
in neatly, the smaller the angle of arc, the
larger the radius of the imaginary circle: this
means that the smaller angle, the flatter the arc
will be.  You can have either a clockwise or an
anticlockwise arc, but not a bi-directional one!
You can also change the spaces between words to
dots, as with a circle.

Rotate, Slope and Lean
----------------------
The rotate option rotates the baseline of your 
string by the angle shown in the box, but the 
characters of the string remain normal. An angle
of 0 is a normal baseline, 45 goes from bottom
left to top right, 90 from bottom to top and so
on - that is, the baseline rotates anti-clockwise
as the angle increases. The angle is altered as
described above under the Arc option.

The slope option also uses the angle setting, but
this time, whilst the baseline and horizontal
element of the characters are rotated, the
vertical element of the characters is not. For
example, a slope of 45 would mean that the
horizontal bar of a capital T would be at 45
(instead of the normal 0), but the vertical bar
would remain at 90 as normal. Using slope can
give some strange effects: a slope of 90 or 270
makes the string disappear altogether, so FontFX
won't let you do it! Any slope between 95 and
265 gives a mirror image of the string in the
Y-axis.

Lean is similar to slope, except it is the 
vertical, or Y-axis, that is rotated, and not the
baseline or the horizonal. For example, a lean of
45 would make the vertical bar of a capital T
lean 45 to the left, but the horizontal bar would
remain parallel to the baseline at 0. Again, some
strange effects can be given by lean: a lean of
90 or 270 makes the string disappear and so is
not allowed, and between those values, the string
is reflected about its X-axis. Lean angles from
275 to 355 are similar to italicization.

Because it is sometimes difficult to visualise the
effect of rotate, slope and lean, a small
'example' window opens showing how the word
'FontFX' would look based on your current setting.
This remains open whilst you alter the angle,  and
closes a few seconds later. If you want to re-open
it to check the setting, just click on rotate,
slope or lean again.

Grow and Shrink
---------------
These simple effects make each character in the
string a different size. When 'Grow ' is selected,
the character at the beginning of the string will
be smaller than your chosen fontsize, with the
character at the end full size. With 'Shrink', the
sizes are reversed. If you have the 'Then...' option
selected along with 'Grow', the middle
character(s) will be 100% and the start and end
characters will be smaller. Similarly, 'Shrink then
grow' starts at 100%, the middle is smaller and then
the end will be 100% again. The actual size of the
smallest character in the string is defined by a
percentage reduction setting: i.e., if this setting
is 75% reduction, the smallest character will be 25%
of the normal fontsize. This effect is very
effective when used in conjunction with circle and
arc, or with slope to create perspective.

Customising FontFX Start-Up Settings
------------------------------------
When you purchase FontFX, and run it for the first
time, the control window will show a particular
range of settings: font Trinity.Medium, fill
colour black, no outline colour, outline thickness
1, X and Y font sizes 72pt and no special effects
selected. You may wish to change this selection,
and this is easily done. First set up what you
want - perhaps you want a wall shadow, or a
rotation effect. When the control window shows
everything as you want it, bring up the 'main
menu' and slide across the Save option. You will
find two options, 'Drawing' and 'Settings'. Slide
across 'Settings' to open the Save Settings save
box. You can also get to this point just by
clicking on the 'Save settings' icon in the
toolbox. Now click SELECT or ADJUST on 'As
default', and then on 'OK': your current set-up
will be saved back into FontFX. Next time you run
FontFX, these settings will be restored.

ScriptFiles 
-----------
When you save your personal settings as described
in the above paragraph, you are actually saving a
'scriptfile'. This is a file containing commands
which FontFX understands to set up the control
window. You can open a save box for such a
scriptfile at any time, by sliding across the
'Settings' option in the Save submenu or by
clicking on the 'Save settings' icon in the
toolbox. You can also do it by pressing CTRL-F3
whilst the caret is in the text icon. A standard
save box will appear, and you can drag the icon
into a directory viewer to save a scriptfile
containing the current settings, or transfer it
directly to !Edit if you like. Note that when you
save settings in this way, whatever text string is
shown in the control window will also be saved,
but if you save Defaults as described above, the
text string is NOT saved.

Preparing Script Files for FontFX
---------------------------------
The above method saves the current string and
settings automatically into a scriptfile, but you
could create such a scriptfile manually if you
like. A scriptfile can also contain a number of
strings with their special effect settings which
will be created one after another. If you have
included the appropriate commands in your script
file, FontFX can also go straight ahead and create
each drawfile, and then save it or transfer it
straight to !Draw. Otherwise, when the first
string has been dealt with, and you are ready for
the next string (if there is one), just click on
the word 'Text:' next to the text box, and the
next string will be inserted, and the next
selection of special effects will be set.

The FontFX Command language.
----------------------------
All the facilities of FontFX can be selected by
using the FontFX command language in your script
files. Before discussing how you can write the
script files, here is a list of all the commands,
with their syntax. Where parameters are required,
they are shown in angled brackets. Where a
parameter is optional, it is also shown in round
brackets. If a parameter is shown as <angle>, it
can have a value between 0 and 360. If a parameter
is shown as <colour> it can have a value between 0
and &FFFFFF. Other parameters are described in the
text.

<a blank line> A blank line in a script file is
               taken to mean the end of a
               'packet'. A packet is a group of
               commands, optionally including a
               text string. Each packet is taken
               as an entity by FontFX, and
               execution of a script file will
               pause at a blank line, only to
               continue when you click on the
               icon 'Text:' in the control
               window. You can force FontFX to
               continue beyond a blank line by
               including the command \TR in a
               packet (see below).

<textstring>   Any line in the script
               file which does NOT start with a
               \ will be taken as a text string
               to be converted. If you want to
               start your text string with the
               character '\', start it with two
               '\'s to avoid confusion with any
               commands.

\*<textstring> Comment line - has no effect at
               all.

\AA<angle>     Anticlockwise arc of angle <angle>.

\AC<angle>     Clockwise arc of angle <angle>. 

\BE            Activates the border effect.

\CA<angle>     Anticlockwise circle, with the
               text starting <angle> degrees
               around the circle.

\CB<angle>     Bi-directional circle, with the
               text starting <angle> degrees
               around the circle.

\CC<angle>     Clockwise circle, with the
               text starting <angle> degrees
               around the circle.

\CO            Activates the column effect.

\CR(<filename>) Create drawfile and pop up the
               save box, optionally inserting
               the <filename> in the save box
               filename field. This command is
               only acted upon when FontFX
               detects the end of a 'packet' of
               commands - see above for details
               of what a 'packet' is.

\DE            Defaults. This command restores
               FontFX to the special effect
               settings that are set up when you
               first run the program.

\FC(<colour>)  Fill colour <colour>. If <colour>
               is omitted, fill colour will be
               set to 'none'. If <colour> is 'R',
               the rainbow option will be set.

\FO<fontname>  Font name <fontname>. Remember to
               separate the different elements
               of a font name with full stops,
               e.g. Corpus.Bold.Oblique

\FS<colour>    Floor Shadow of colour <colour>

\GR            Grow effect enabled.

\IS<code>      Internal shape for circle. <code>
               can be one of the following:
                 C Circle
                 D Diamond
                 P Pentangle
                 S Square

\JI            Activates the jiggle effect.

\LE<angle>     Lean at angle <angle>.

\OC(<colour>)  Outline Colour <colour>. If
               <colour> is omitted, outline
               colour will be set to 'None'.

\OT<value>     Outline Thickness <value>.
               <value> can be between 1 and 5.

\RB            Activates the rainbow effect.

\RC <colour> <colour> (<colour>...)
               Defines the sequence of colours
               in the rainbow effect. A minimum
               of two colours is necessary,
               and a maximum of sixteen.

\RI            Activates the ripple effect.

\RO<angle>     Rotate by angle <angle>

\RS            Replace spaces with dots. 

\SC<value>     Size to value <value>. <value>
               can be between 1 and 999 in
               points. This affects both the
               X and Y sizes together. This
               command exists to retain
               compatibility with early versions
               of FontFX and you should use
               SX and SY (see below) in
               preference in any new work.
             
\SD <angle>    Shadow direction of angle <angle>.

\SF <value>    Shadow 'fall' (length or distance).
               <value> can be between 1 and 40,
               7 being normal. 1 would make the
               shadow very close to the original,
               whereas 40 would make it a long
               way away.

\SH            Shrink option enabled.

\SL<angle>     Slope to angle <angle>.

\ST<code>      Stencil, with frame size <code>.
               <code> can be S, M or L.

\SX<value>     X Size to value <value>. <value>
               can be between 1 and 999 in
               points. If this command is 
               included in a script file but
               there is no corresponding
               SY command (see below), the
               X AND Y sizes will both be set
               to <value> and the Y=X option
               will be selected.

\SY<value>     Y Size to value <value>. <value>
               can be between 1 and 999 in
               points. This command can be
               omitted if you want the X and Y
               sizes to be equal - see SX
               above. On the other hand, if the
               Y=X option is currently set,
               and you load a script file that
               contains an SY command but NOT
               an SX command, the Y=X option will
               be unset, and the Y size altered
               to <value> but the X size left
               unaltered.

\TB            Switches the toolbox (attached to the
               side of the main control window) on.

\TH            'Then...' option enabled (in
               conjunction with 'Grow' or 
               'Shrink').

\TR(<filename>) Transfer, i.e. create drawfile,
               and immediately save it into a
               file of name <filename>. If no
               filename is given, the drawfile
               will be transferred straight into
               !Draw (if it is already running
               or can be located on your discs).
               Like, \CR, this command is only
               executed at the end of a packet.
               However, if there is another
               packet following on in the script
               file, the \TR command will force
               FontFX, after transferring the
               drawfile, to start execution of
               the next packet in the scriptfile. 

\TS<colour>    3D Shadow with the rear of the
               shadow effect of colour <colour>.

\WS<colour>    Wall Shadow of colour <colour>.

All commands can be negated by prefixing the code
with an 'X', for example '\XBE' means deactive
the border effect.

Layout of a script file
-----------------------
Script files can be fairly free in format, but the
following rules apply:
  
(i) If there is more than one packet in a
scriptfile, they must be separated by a blank
line.

(ii) All commands must start on a new line.

(iii) All commands have to be in capital letters,
i.e. \CIA, not \cia.

(iv) Parameters, where given, can either run
straight on from the command, or be separated from
the command by a space, i.e. \CI A or \CIA.

(v) You should only enter \X$$ commands to cancel
settings if those settings would not otherwise be
cancelled by other commands in your file. For
example, you should not follow the command \CIB
with the command \XRI, because selecting a circle
would automatically cancel ripple anyway. A good
idea, if in doubt, is to include the command \DE
at the beginning of each packet: this will ensure
that no special effects are left set by previous
usage of FontFX to disturb the effect of the
following packet.

(vi) Parameters which do not fall in the ranges
specified above will be ignored, but no error
message will be given.

(vii) Text strings should be no more than 250
characters long. If they are, they will be
truncated to 250 characters.

Summary
-------
As with so many programs, the best way to become
fully aware of the many different effects you can
achieve using FontFX is to experiment. The Acorn
Interactive Help system is fully supported, and
it is recommended that you use this whilst you get
used to the program. Once you have done so, FontFX
will greatly increase the facilities of any
desktop publisher or graphic word processor.
