Font Blend  -  Colour-graduated text on the Risc PC

by Lee Calcraft

This program can only be used on a Risc PC

Have you ever seen the very tasty TV captions
which use a graduated colour fill for the main
body colour of the font, and wondered how it
could be done? Well, if you have a Risc PC you
can actually achieve the effect in real time
without having to carry out graduated fills on
each letter in turn. The technique is explained in the article Colour-Graduated Text on the Risc PC on page 20 of this month's RISC User magazine. The program supplied on the disc gives an example of the effects that can be achieved with this technique.

The program is run in the usual way by double-clicking on its icon in a directory viewer, or by clicking on its icon in the RISC User menu system. When the program is run the screen clears and four lines of text with the words "Colour blending" are displayed in graduated colours.

The text is printed in a 60 point font size, and to achieve the optimum speed of redraw you will need to ensure that your machine is configured correctly. Double-click on !Boot in the root directory of
your hard disc, select Fonts from the dialogue
box, and increase the value of Anti-alias up
to to at least 60. If you don't do this, it can take quite a while for the text to be drawn on the screen.

In theory it should be possible to modify the program to use your own choice of wording, font and size etc. However, the values used in the program have been carefully chosen to get the best effect with the chosen parameters, so it will require some degree of experimentation if you wish to deviate very far from the text and size used. The techniques used are described in the accompanying article in RISC User, and it is recommended that you read the article carefully before attempting to modify the program.

Copyright  Lee Calcraft 1995
