VGA Full Screen Fonts for XyWrite

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from Michael Norman
 on Sat, 18 Dec 2004 20:04:54 -0500

Let's talk about VGA Full Screen font alternatives. No DOS
box, no window -- just Full Screen, where all the XP
problems that have us in knots disappear, and we still
experience (even under XP) XyWrite as we knew it, way back
when.

> In the interests of keeping the archive on this subject
> clear, you are not here talking about *full-screen* fonts,
> which is to say those machine fonts that display in either
> dos sessions (W9X) or in a virtual dos screen (XP).
> All the fonts mentioned in this thread are for dos
> windows, dos boxes, call them what you will. RH is right:
> there's a host of them, though few, IMHO, compare to Uwe
> Sieber's. Wouldn't it be great, and wouldn't it solve a host
> of annoying issues with XP, if we could find a replacement
> font(s) for those in true full-screen? And nothing would give
> me greater pleasure than to be wrong about all this -- which
> is to say, someone coming forward with such fonts. Real
> full-screen in XP works without a hitch.

I repeat that, because -- in the interests of keeping the
archive on this subject clear -- it needs correction.
Michael's right in spirit, but wrong that *all* the fonts
mentioned in this thread were Desktop windows fonts -- I
alluded to many VGA Full Screen fonts in a msg to Maben
Poirier (about 40, if you unZIP the files I mentioned).

But first, why is this thread labeled "Off Topic"? It is
dead ON Topic! It should be called "looking at XyWrite".
The screen, like printing, is a core issue for all of us.
We are entitled to enjoy what we see on screen while writing
with XyWrite.

Another thing I'd like to point out in preface, as long as
we're concerned about our archives, is that XySearch is not
Google. When you query the XySearch engine, the "hits" do
not display phrases that contain matching words from
*throughout* the matching documents. Instead, what you see
displayed, verbatim, are the first several hundred bytes of
each document, with highlighted matches that *happen to
appear* in those first several hundred bytes. THEREFORE, if
you want users to get the gist of what you have to say when
they scan the hits, make sure you put a synopsis in the
first couple lines. Maybe we should put "keywords" at the
top of important messages. (I've been oblivious to this,
but I'm gonna reform my ways.)

VGA Font Loader:
---------------

There are numerous VGA font choices. But before you can
exploit them, you need a utility to load alternative VGA
fonts in place of the default system font. One such utility
is called VGA.COM, by Horst Schaeffer (FPMAN220.ZIP):
 ftp://ftp.bu.edu/pub/mirrors/simtelnet/msdos/vga/fpman220.zip

The most important point is that you must load the VGA font
*before* you launch XyWrite. You can create a BATch file to
start XyWrite that loads a different VGA font before it
starts Editor, or (simpler, after you select one font that
you like) you can load that font via AUTOEXEC.BAT or
AUTOEXEC.NT.

The syntax of VGA.COM is:

 VGA FONT [d:\path\]Fontname.FNT

The literal "FONT" must be the first argument, verbatim --
followed by the actual font filename.

NOTE: When you switch out of VGA (Alt-Enter) and move to a
Desktop window, the current VGA font is no longer displayed.
Whatever you set as your "permanent" VGA font is completely
ignored when you operate in a Desktop window -- raster and
Lucida foints are generally operative in the Desktop arena.
The settings you choose for either of these have zero
bearing on the other -- zero! You can load any VGA font in
AUTOEXEC, and it will be blithely ignored by the Desktop
window -- and vice versa. They do not affect each other,
and they do not *conflict* with each other. They are
completely separate. You select a default Desktop window
font in Properties, and you select a default VGA font in
AUTOEXEC. Don't mix them up -- but DO actively *manage*
them *both*, for a satisfactory viewing experience!

CodePages:
---------

VGA fonts can be subdivided into three main categories on
*Windows* computers:

CodePage 437 - US ASCII - the default font on most North
American computers, and the default font of XyWrite too

CodePage 850 - Western Europe - the default VGA font on most
European computers, and the only alternative font that
XyWrite accepts *natively* (by changing the LAnguage
variable, "D[F] LA=850")

CodePage 1252 - the M$ Windows modification of the "Latin-1"
or "ANSI" character set, which is today used by default on
all HTML pages (Internet browser documents), on the Windows
Desktop (the font used by Notepad, M$Word, and other GUI
programs, for example), etc. (The real, internationally-
agreed "Latin-1", called ISO 8859-1, is not recognized *at
all* by M$ Windows! Once again, M$ carves out its own
standard, with emphasis on the "$".) 1252 is supported
under XyWrite via XyWWWeb's "ANSIfied XyWrite" suite of
programs, a full-blown array of KBD, DFL, PRN, ACCENT table,
and other support files, which implement 1252 across the
board, with thorough support for high-order (accented)
characters >127.

There are _many_ other CodePages, for other language groups,
but these three are the main ones, and we'll limit
discussion to them.

What is a CodePage? In brief, there are 256 available
characters in VGA, and the various CodePages map different
glyphs to the same character number. The low order
characters <128 are mostly the same: for example, character
65 is "A" in all three CodePages. The differences appear
mostly in high order characters >127: for example,
character 184 is an IBM graphics drawing character in CP437,
a copyright symbol in CP850, and a cedilla accent in CP1252.
Small beer in common-denominator English, but a very big
deal in every other Western language.

Fonts:
-----

There's a package of files attached to this message
(CHARS.ZIP):
 CHARS.TXT
 CHARS.BAT
 VGA.COM

You would be wise to make a temporary directory called
d:\VGA, and just dump all your fonts, plus the above 3
files, into it for testing purposes. The goal here is to
find one font you really love and can live with, more or
less permanently.

The FPMAN220.ZIP file, mentioned above, is a good place to
start. UnZIP it into d:\VGA, go into a FullScreen DOS
session (Alt-Enter), navigate to the VGA directory, and
start testing.

VGA fonts usually have a *.FNT extension.

Suppose you command:
 VGA FONT ORATOR.FNT
Immediately the appearance of the entire screen will change.
Which is great! Each time you change a FNT, command:
 TYPE CHARS.TXT
The entire charset for that CodePage will be displayed in
the current font's style or appearance.

Download CP1252.ZIP:
 http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~af380/cp1252.zip

Download FONTED30.ZIP:

http://www.packetstormsecurity.org/apoc2k/misctext/fonted30.zip

Or look here for more fonts (scan the listing for "VGA"):
 http://serviceftp.flashnet.it/simcgi-bin/dosfind.cgi?font

In all of these ZIPs, just UnZIP the *.FNT files into \VGA...

Now that we have a few fonts files in \VGA, lets's examine
all our present options (there are many more fonts besides,
but these are quite a few -- all the CodePages, + Hebrew,
Cyrillic, Braille, whathaveyou).

Make sure Vern Buerg's LIST.COM is located in the DOS PATH
(that means, in case you don't know -- let's just be flatass
prescriptive here -- C:\WINDOWS\system32 or C:\WINNT\system32).
Don't have LIST? Where have you been? Get it, now, and
don't lose it -- the most important DOS utility, period:
 http://www.buerg.com/downloads/listplus.zip

Then type this command (carefully!):
 FOR %F IN (*.FNT) DO VGA FONT %F & COPY /Y CHARS.TXT %F.TXT & LIST %F.TXT &
DEL %F.TXT
CHARS.BATfile executes this command -- you don't have to
type it manually...

After you launch this, hit Escape when LIST displays the
characters, to move on to the next font. The Fontname is up
in the title bar. (The above command probably doesn't work
in 9x -- 9x users do have to pay the piper from time to
time...)

Yes, after setting a font, if you toggle to the Desktop,
then return to FullScreen, you lose whatever font you set --
you're back to the default. But you can set it more
permanently. However, it's late, and I'm tired, so I'll
pursue this another time, and ... bye bye

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------

Attachment:
CHARS.ZIP

Description: Binary data