Font Master: Outline Font Organiser
by Kell Gatherer

The number of outline fonts now available can cause problems with certain applications in RISC OS 2 (and some in RISC OS 3 - see below): some applications (such as RISC OS 2 Edit) simply crash if there are too many fonts, while the loading of others can take a long time as the entire font list is read in. Font Master is a hard disc application which permits your fonts to be grouped in up to five directories, with control over which are "seen" by other applications. Font Master also makes it easy to preview a line of text in any font.

RISC OS 2 Installation
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To install Font Master on your hard disc, simply copy the !FMaster directory to the appropriate place. Now open the !FMaster directory (hold down Shift while double-clicking on its icon) and open the directory Modules. If you now open any of your existing !Fonts directories, you will find a number of files, included in which are two modules called "Fonts" and "Super": copy these into the directory !FMaster.Modules. Then rename the file !FMaster.Boot to !FMaster.!Boot. Finally, there is a file called RiscOS2 which should now be renamed !Run (replacing the existing !Run file).

Also inside the !FMaster directory is a directory called Fonts: open this and you'll find five pre-named directories called Default, Headers, Regular, Script and Various. The Default directory must not be renamed and should contain the "standard" fonts which certain programs need to see: in this I normally include Character, Corpus, Dingbats, Homerton, Pembroke and Trinity. These in a sense are my minimum requirements: for example you can't load Impression without the last three of these fonts being available.

The other four directories can be renamed as you wish, and can contain what you like, or nothing at all. Your original !Fonts directory, or directories, may be deleted once you've moved all the fonts out of them. What you'll end up with is a fairly huge !FMaster directory: mine is just short of 3Mb.

RISC OS 3 Installation
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Although all the problems with large font lists have been solved in RISC OS 3, there are many applications which were written with RISC OS 2 in mind (FormEd, for example) which will still read and install all available fonts at the time of loading; this can take some time with a large font directory. To make Font Master work on RISC OS 3, delete the !FMaster.Modules directory (as the Font Manager is now in ROM), and the !FMaster.!Boot and !FMaster.!Run files. Finally, there is a file called RiscOS3 which should now be renamed !Run (replacing the existing !Run file).

The Default directory may now be renamed as you wish, but you should not copy Corpus, Homerton or Trinity into any of the new font directories: those fonts now exist in ROM.

Using Font Master in this way in RISC OS 3 means that fonts are not loaded until you request them (which can save time at start-up), and old versions of FontFX will still run, although ironically it will not be able to use the three fonts in ROM.

In use
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When you first run Font Master, the list of fonts Font Master knows about will be incorrect. To rectify this, click Menu over the icon bar icon and click on "Save Font List".

When Font Master is first seen by the filer, the !Boot file installs the Font Manager and sets the system variable Font$Prefix to point at the Default fonts. Font$Prefix was used by the old font manager, and is used by RISC OS 2 Edit when looking for fonts. RISC OS 2 Edit will never crash again!

Running the application installs Font Master on the icon bar, and also sets the path variable Font$Path to your preferred groups of fonts. Clicking on the icon bar icon will open a window showing your groups of fonts: these may be selected or deselected as you wish. If you deselect all of them, Font$Path is pointed to Font$Prefix, which effectively "hides" all of the fonts apart from the default set. The number of fonts in each group is shown, and also the total number of fonts which are currently available to other applications. You may save your preferred selection by bringing up the menu and clicking on "Save Settings".

The program works by setting <Font$Path> to a list of filename prefixes: it is the equivalent of typing in the following as a star command:
*SetMacro Font$Path <Font$Dir>.Default.,<Font$Dir>.Headers.,... etc.
Newer applications make use of Font$Path rather than Font$Prefix. Impression and PipeDream, for example, check to see if Font$Path has changed since they last had a look at it, and change the list of available fonts accordingly.

You can have a look at the names of fonts in each directory by clicking on the group name: if the group is not currently selected, the font names will be shaded. You can preview a font from a selected group by clicking on the font name: the test string (which can be entered via the "Test string" menu option) will be displayed in the writable menu item.

Having set things up the way you want them, if you click on "Save Font List" in the menu, the current list will be saved to disc, speeding up the re-loading of Font Master when you load it next. Each time you add a new font to one of the directories (or delete one or make any other changes), you should re-save the font list to bring it up to date.

Once Font$Path is set the way you want it, Font Master can be removed from the icon bar to release memory.

 RISC User 1993
