The Font Manager for RISC OS 3
by Bill Wallace

updated by James Huntington

RISC OS 3 ONLY

If you've been taking advantage of all the font offers currently being
advertised, then you will probably have discovered that having a large number
of fonts stored on your hard drive can be more of a problem than a pleasure.

Finding the right style of font out of a selection of several hundred is
difficult enough, but if you use several font directories, you can end up
generating the dreaded 'Buffer overflow' error if the Font$Path alias (used to
identify to RISC OS where your fonts are located) grows longer than 255
characters.

Font Manager provides an excellent solution to this problem. It allows you to
group different styles of fonts (e.g. Serif, Gothic, Open, Headline, etc.)
into unique font directories that are recognised by their distinctive icons.
Double-clicking on any of the font directory icons will add their paths to
Font$Path, thus installing them ready for use. When you have finished using
the fonts in a particular font directory, just double-click on its icon again.
This will de-install that specific directory, and remove its reference from
Font$Path.

USING FONT MANAGER
Running FontMan will open up a Filer window containing the following items:
   !F1
   !F2
   !F3
   !F4
   !F5
   !F6
   !F7
   !F8
   !F9
   !Fonts
   !FontSys
                                        
!F1 to !F9 are the font directories, and should be copied onto your hard
drive, either into the root directory, or, for a tidier directory structure,
into a directory called Fonts. The font directory !Fonts is a duplicate of the
standard !Fonts directory supplied with RISC OS 3, although it does not
contain the actual fonts. If you already have !Fonts on your hard drive, you
can ignore the duplicate, otherwise copy it onto your hard drive. !FontSys is
the resourses directory for Font Manager. You must copy this into the same
directory in which you install !F1 to !F9. It must also be seen by the Filer,
as for the !System folder, before using running any of the font installers,
!F1 to !F9.

The icons for !F1 to !F9 represent the following styles of fonts:
   !F1 - Open Fonts
   !F2 - Smooth Fonts
   !F3 - Script Fonts
   !F4 - Fancy Fonts
   !F5 - Sharp Fonts
   !F6 - Poster Fonts
   !F7 - Gothic Fonts
   !F8 - Effect Fonts
   !F9 - Primary Fonts

In order to enable Font Manager to install and de-install specific groups of
fonts from the Font$Path, you will need to make a small change to the !Run
file in each of the font directories !F1 to !F9.

First of all, copy your fonts into the relevant directories. For example,
the font directory !F4 is for fancy fonts such as Tube and Bubble (to open
a directory that is prefixed with an !, hold down the Shift key and
double-click on it).

Then load the !Run file from each font directory into Edit by holding down 
the Shift key and double-clicking on it. Goto the last line in the !Run file,
which will be similar to the following:
  
   Run <FontCheck$Dir>.FontCheck Bubble "Open Fonts" <Obey$Dir>

Change the font name, in this case Bubble, to the name of the first font that
appears in that directory. 

Save the !Run file by pressing F3 and clicking on OK. And that's all there is
to it.

Whenever you now double-click on !F4, the FontSys utility will check if the
Bubble font is already present in the font list, and if not, will install it
and all the fancy fonts in that directory. If Bubble is in the font list, then
it and all the fancy fonts in that directory will be de-installed.

Do the same for the rest of the font directories, and you will no longer
have problems remembering where a specific font is, or having too many fonts
installed at the same time.

 RISC User 1993
