DeskFontB  -  Using Acorn's Toolbox from Basic

by Tony Howat


DeskFontB is a simple application written in Basic using Acorn's Toolbox. To use it you'll need the Toolbox modules in your System directory. It provides a quick method of changing the Desktop font under RISC OS 3.5 and later without having to mess around with Configure.

For DeskFontB to work under RISC OS 3.5 you need to press F12 and type configure wimpfont 0 at the prompt before running it for the first time. This stops the Wimp from using the CMOS font name.


In use

Using DeskFontB is simply a matter of selecting a font from the Desktop font submenu on the icon bar menu. After selecting a font the screen will redraw with all the icon text (hopefully) in the font you selected. Clicking Adjust on the icon at any time will reset the Desktop font to Homerton.Medium (just in case things become unreadable). Choosing Save current font creates a file DeskFont in your PreDesk directory which will set Wimp$Font to the current font on boot-up.


Notes

During the development of DeskFontB, two bugs were discovered in the FontMenu module. The first - FontMenu_AboutToBeShown is sent too late to use FontMenu_Set_Font - was worked around. The second - strange errors when the user Adjust-clicks in the FontMenu and then Adjust-clicks again - can't be worked round without considerable bodging. However Acorn has fixed this problem in version 0.17 of FontMenu, which is included in the Issue 1 C/C++ updates disc availiable from Vector Services (for an administration charge) or free from ftp.acorn.co.uk. I have not seen a version of FontMenu without the first bug, but a fix has been promised.

Thanks are due to Ian Johnson (C/C++ Project Manager at Acorn) for his help.

Note that a version of this program, written in C, was previously published in issues 8:10 and 9:1 of RISC User.

 Copyright RISC User Magazine 1997
