SwitchFont automatically adjusts itself to the configured country.
Languages available: English, German

           
             Help file for SwitchFont
           

written 2nd-4th of June 1994 by Richard Atterer
small bug fixed on 22nd of June
internationalisation added on 24th of June
minor fix to make it run on RiscPC on 29071997 (oops, a bit late!)

This program is Freeware and so may be copied and spread freely as long as no
modifications are made (except for saving ones own choices) and no profit is
made in the spreading, but I keep the copyright. Under no circumstances may
this program be sold as an extra together with commercial software without
my written permission (contact me).


First of all I want to say that this program is my Bet I can do it better
version of FontsPlus by Simon Burrows (as some of you may have noticed). My
SwitchFont doesnt work with RISC OS 2, but on the other hand it needs less
memory (that was the main reason, because I think 64K is too much just to
alter Font$Path now and then) and provides a nice window. Furthermore, you
can have a maximum of 30 font dirs and no errors are produced when the limit
is reached...


SwitchFont V1.00 (for RISC OS 3.00 onwards):


RISC OS 3 offers excellent outline font facilities, along with an intelligent
system to allow programs to use the fonts available on a system. However,
there are still some weak points, especially when many outline fonts have to
be maintained:
If you have fonts on different disks and want to have them available (i.e. to
appear in Font name submenus and the like), you need to boot each one of
them (if they contain applications like !Fonts), or set up Font$Path to
boot them all. In both cases, once you have them available they can be
removed again only with the FontRemove command, which is not very
comfortable. Furthermore, the displaying of a font submenu can take quite
long and the menu will be very big.

Usage of SwitchFont:
Drag directories containing the different font directories onto the
SwitchFont icon. These directories can be applications such as !Fonts,
but you MUST make sure that the different font families are in the
application directory itself (e.g. !Fonts.Selwyn). Normally it is more
convenient to use normal directories, so you can choose their name (e.g.
create a directory called Handwritng and copy into it all font families
that look like handwriting). It doesnt matter where these directories are;
they can be on different disks. DONT drag individual font directories, such
as Selwyn, to the icon bar. If you have made something wrong, you can
remove the directory from SwitchFonts list by selecting it in the REMOVE
subdirectory. The maximum possible number of directories is 30 (ROM fonts
included).
If you press Select or Adjust over the icon bar icon, the program opens a
window with the names of the font directories, each with an option icon to
its left. At the top of the list are always the ROM fonts, which are always
selected and thus available (and which cant be removed either), below them
your directories. In order to make them available or not available, click on
the appropiate name, and the fonts of the directory will appear in your font
menu if its name is ticked in the window.
Note: In the font menu itself, the fonts will be mixed up, i.e. sorted
alphabetically. Theres no possibility to show the directory names there and
the fonts in further submenus.

In order to save your selections, that is the names of the directories and
information on which of them are ticked, choose SAVE from the icon bar menu,
and the application will attempt to save them in !SwitchF.Choices.
Note: If you have for one reason or another lost the Choices file (which
means you get an File ... not found error when you try to run SwitchFont),
create an empty file called Choices of the type Obey, run SwitchFont,
make your selections, save them, AND RUN IT ONCE MORE.


I have written SwitchFont as a module task, which has the following
advantages:
It needs very little memory (altogether 6 KBytes!)
It survives soft resets, i.e. resets without the Ctrl key down. After
  such a reset, SwitchFonts icon will be on the icon bar.
After you have chosen QUIT, it is still in memory, and can be restarted by
  issuing the command SwitchFont from the NEW TASK submenu of the task
  manager (DOES NOT WORK if you press F12 and enter the command). In order to
  remove it completely from workspace, type RMKill SwitchFont.

One more thing: You will get a Buffer overflow error when you try to open
a menu containing a font submenu and have selected more than 10 font
directories. This is not an error of my program, but a limitation of RISC OS
3 (could also be caused only by the ROM apps  too lazy to test it).


I hope this program will help you a bit or eight!

Yours,
Richard Atterer on 04061994



P.S. Sory four my englisch-mistakes

 Copyright 1994 by Strider Richard Atterer