Fontastic

Version 0.10 (09-Sep-2007)

Fontastic is public domain
This program may be freely distributed for no more than the cost of the media
on which it is distributed. It remains at all times  2007 R. F. Windley &
The Really Small Software Company.

Disclaimer:
This software is supplied as is. No responsibility will be taken by the
author for any loss of data through the use or misuse of this application.

Introduction
------------
Fontastic is a simple font management application. It allows fonts to be
split into different groups which can be activated as required.

An index of currently active fonts can be generated in either Draw or DDL
format which can then be printed out to provide a reference to the fonts
available on a system and the group that they belong to.

Fontastic also has the ability to scan any document when it loads and turn on
the relevant font groups automatically.

Requirements
------------
Fontastic should run on any RISC OS 3+ machine with 2Mb of memory. It does
require the Toolbox modules so this might push requirements up somewhat. 

Please not however that the application has only been tested on RISC OS 4.39
and RISC OS 6.

Getting started
---------------

Loading Fontastic
-----------------
Fontastic can be loaded by double clicking on the Fontastic icon in the filer
display.

Once loaded an the Fontastic icon will appear on the left side of the iconbar
in the standard way.

It is however recommended that Fontastic is automatically loaded when you
switch you computer on. This will enable any font groups that you have
switched on to be activated.

Not loading Fontastic in this way may also impact the reliability of the
document scanning feature.

Loading Fontastic automatically
-------------------------------
RISC OS 4 and RISC OS 6
For these versions of the operating system choose Choices... from the Task
iconbar menu which will display the Configuration application. From there,
click the Boot icon to display the Boot configuration window.

From the Boot configuration window click Run to display the Run at startup
window.

Now simply drag the !Fontastic icon from the filer window where it has been
installed to this window and it will be added to the list. Click Set to save
the change.

Next time you start your computer Fontastic will be automatically loaded.

Other versions of RISC OS
Please refer to the manual that came with your computer.

Managing font groups
--------------------
Clicking the Fontastic icon on the iconbar will display the Font groups
window. 

Each font group has an option button that indicates whether it is active or
not, the name of the group, a group directory and optionally a green tick
indicates that the group is on. The distinction between a group being
activated and on is covered later.

The first time this is displayed a single group will be shown.

This is the ROM group and is always present and always activated which is why
the option button is faded. 

Adding a new group
------------------
In order to add a new group click Menu over the Font groups window. The
following menu is displayed.

Choose New Group from this menu to enter a new group name and click Create.

The new group will appear in the Font groups window.

Adding fonts to a group
-----------------------
Once a font group has been created it is easy to add fonts to it. Double
clicking the directory icon next to the group name will display a filer
window. Fonts can then just be dragged from their source location to the font
group.

The fonts will then appear in the font group.

Note that the underlying files will be copied.

Activating a group
------------------
A group is activated by selecting the option button next to the group name.
Once the group has been activated the green 'on' tick will appear.

Unselecting the option button will remove the tick and deactivate the group.

The difference between 'on' and 'activated'
-------------------------------------------
At this point it is worth mentioning the  difference between a group being
activated and being on.

A group that has been activated is also always on. A group that is
deactivated that was activated will no longer be on.

It is however possible for a group to be on without having being activated.
This can occur when the document scan functionality is used. If a group is
found to contain a required font then that group will be turned on but will
not be permanently activated. That is to say, the next time the computer is
switched on, that group will not be activated.

Deleting a group
----------------
A group can be deleting by selecting the directory next to the group name and
choosing Delete from the menu.

Note that doing this will also delete all the fonts that belong to the group.

Generating an index
-------------------
Choosing Generate index... from the main menu will display the Generate index
window.

This allows an index of currently available fonts to be generated as either a
series of Draw files or a single DDL document that can be loaded into Ovation
Pro.

Both formats have a similar layout.

Draw or DDL?
------------
The advantage of generating the index as DDL is that it is possible to have a
single document containing all available fonts. However, this can be very
slow to load and print.

Generating a Draw index avoids this problem at the expense of having multiple
files. Currently also the example text that appears in the file is limited to
a single line.

Index options
-------------
When creating an index the following settings can be adjusted:

Font size
The size in points of the text in the index document.

Font name
The name of the font used to display the font name, point size and group
name.

Example text
A piece of text to display using the font being indexed. Not that when
generating a Draw index the text should all fit on one line.

Index type
Either Draw or DDL as described above.

Include bold
If switched on, any bold variants of a font will be included in the generated
index.

Include italic/oblique
If switched on, any italic or oblique variants of a font will be included in
the generated index.

Include ROM fonts
If switched on the standard ROM fonts will be included in the generated
index.

Known groups only
If switched on, only fonts that belong to Fontastic font groups will be
included in the index.

Click the Save button to display a standard save box which will allow the
generated index to be saved.

Scanning documents
------------------
Fontastic has the ability to scan documents automatically for any fonts and
switch on the group that contains the font. This can be achieved in two ways.

Defining filetypes to scan
--------------------------
Using the Choices window (see below) a list of file types can be defined that
will be automatically scanned every time they are loaded.

For example, Draw or Ovation Pro files might be configured to always be
scanned when they are loaded.

Dragging a file to the Fontastic icon
-------------------------------------
Dragging a file to the Fontastic icon on the iconbar will cause the file to
be scanned regardless of type. Once the file has been scanned and any
required font groups activated the file will be loaded into the target
application.

Please note that the scanning process is not completely accurate and can
falsely identify fonts as being required by a document when they are not
actually used.

The iconbar menu
----------------
Clicking Menu over the Fontastic icon on the iconbar will display this menu.
The following items are available:

Info
----
Moving the mouse pointer over this item displays the About this program
window which displays version information about Fontastic.

Help
----
This will display the help supplied with the application.

Choices...
----------
Choosing this will display the choices for Fontastic.

The following choices can be set:

File types to intercept
A list of file types that will be scanned by Fontastic for fonts whenever
they are double clicked on. Any fonts that are found will have their group
switched on so the document can be displayed.

File types can be added by dragging a file of the required type to the
window. A file type can be removed by highlighting it in the list and
clicking Remove.

Scan buffer
The size of buffer to use when scanning a document for fonts.

Example text
The default text to be used when generating a font index.

Quit
----
Choosing this item will cause Fontastic to exit.