DOS ain't dead - Fontana - work in progress version

Laaca

Czech republic,
28.04.2025, 00:02

Fontana - work in progress version (Announce)

I would like to share the WIP (work in progress version) of my font editor.
In the past it had name Kasmar but I renamed this program to Fontána.
It can open, edit and convert many bitmap font formats and even import from Borland CHR fonts and TrueType TTF fonts.
It has really a lot of features but detailed manual I will create later. (I am even considering to create one or few YouTube videos how to work with this program).
For now look at this program and if you have any ideas or you see some bugs please let me know.
I am aware that the "Assembly" menu options do not work yet. I hope I will be able to add it in two weeks.
The download link is here: http://www.laaca.borec.cz/fontana_wip.zip

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DOS-u-akbar!

jadoxa

Queensland, Australia,
28.04.2025, 09:39

@ Laaca

Fontana - work in progress version

Post reply

Just a brief look, out of curiosity.

"FV" (first line) is duplicated in the technical info.

Froze trying to load WQY_11PT (both formats), but I expect that could be a (Windows) DOSBox(-X) issue (since presumably you loaded BDF to create FU).

The character in the grid remains when loading a new font. Not sure if that's an error or not, though, as it could potentially be useful to copy characters between fonts.

The descender (?) arrow in the grid looks to be one pixel too long.

jadoxa Queensland, Australia, 28.04.2025, 10:21 @ Laaca	Fontana - work in progress version Post reply
	Another couple of things. You can double-click to open a file, but not to select the "ASCII-Unicode filter" (and the right column isn't aligned). The {CP850_,TURK}{8,14}.FV fonts seem to be just the top of the font, not actual 8- or 14-line fonts.

Laaca

Czech republic,
28.04.2025, 23:00

@ jadoxa

Fontana - work in progress version

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> Another couple of things.
>
> You can double-click to open a file, but not to select the "ASCII-Unicode
> filter" (and the right column isn't aligned).
>
> The {CP850_,TURK}{8,14}.FV fonts seem to be just the top of the font, not
> actual 8- or 14-line fonts.

Thank you very much for your testing.
Yes, I can confirm, that fonts {CP850_,TURK}{8,14}.FV are incorrect and they must be replaced.
Exact aligning the right column is now possible only with fixed width fonts but Fontana uses in GUI proportional font. Solution for this is not so easy so maybe in some future version.

> The character in the grid remains when loading a new font.
> Not sure if that's an error or not, though,
> as it could potentially be useful to copy characters between fonts.

Yes, it is not bug (but feature), because, as you write, it can be useful to copy characters between fonts

I do not have problems to load WQY_11PT.BDF or WQY_11PT.FU

Please, if you use Windows, try to use this distribution with integrated DOSBox which also works fine for me:
http://www.laaca.borec.cz/dist_fon_box.zip

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DOS-u-akbar!

jadoxa

Queensland, Australia,
29.04.2025, 04:19

@ Laaca

Fontana - work in progress version

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> Exact aligning the right column is now possible only with fixed width fonts
> but Fontana uses in GUI proportional font. Solution for this is not so easy
> so maybe in some future version.

Fair enough.

> I do not have problems to load WQY_11PT.BDF or WQY_11PT.FU

That works; it seems I wasn't giving it enough memory. The BDF loads fine, but the FU version looks to have a lot of junk at the bottom of characters; the first few characters in UNIBIG.fu are also junk.