











                                 D I S P F O N T




                                  PC DOS ONLY



                          Print Soft Font Sample Sheets




                                   Version 1.4





                    Copyright 1987 - 2010 Elfring Fonts Inc











                                TABLE OF CONTENTS



        INTRODUCTION.................................................  1





        OPERATION....................................................  1





        EXAMPLES.....................................................  3





        VARYING THE SAMPLE TEXT......................................  4





        GENERAL INFORMATION..........................................  4





        LICENSE......................................................  5





        WARRANTY.....................................................  5

                              Display a Soft Font


                                  INTRODUCTION
        
        Do you have problems deciding which soft font to use?  It's hard 
        to choose a font without seeing an example of it.  What you need 
        is a display sheet, showing what each of your soft fonts looks 
        like.  This should show the font name and typeface, a sample 
        alphabet, some representative text, and perhaps a symbol map.  Of 
        course you might be able to do this with your word processor and 
        a great deal of work.  OR you can use DISPFONT and turn these 
        sheets out in no time.

        DISPFONT is a utility for the IBM PC or compatible computers and 
        the HP LaserJet or compatible printers.  DISPFONT prints a sample 
        sheet of any soft font.  The sample sheet contains four basic 
        sections: header, alphabet, text, and symbol map.  The "header" 
        displays the soft font file name, the name of the type face, and 
        its style, point size, and orientation.  The alphabet section 
        displays all the characters in the standard ASCII set.  The text 
        section lets you see what the font looks like when printing sev-
        eral lines with that font.  Finally, the symbol map shows each 
        character in the font along with the letter of the alphabet or the 
        decimal code required to select that character.

        DISPFONT requires an IBM or compatible computer, a minimum of 
        128K of memory, and a parallel or serial port.  A LaserJet +, 
        LaserJet II, compatible printer, or DeskJet that supports down-
        loadable soft fonts is also required.


                                    OPERATION
        
        Your printer should be running and on-line before starting 
        DISPFONT.  To run DISPFONT, simply type in the program name, the 
        name of the soft font to display, and one of several options.  
        DISPFONT assumes you want to use printer port LPT1, unless you 
        tell it otherwise.  The basic command structure of DISPFONT is:

        dispfont fontname [printer -s -a -#]
        
        The "fontname" is the name of the soft font file to print a sam-
        ple of.  Everything between the "[" and "]" characters is option-
        al.  Typical soft font file names follow the form:

        FFPPPSPN.USO
        ٳ      font orientation (P/L)
            font style (R/B/L/I)
           point size (tenths of a point)
         type face

        Example font names include:

        tr100rpn.usp  (Times-Roman, 10 point, regular, portrait)
        tr240bpn.usl  (Times-Roman, 24 point, bold, landscape)
        he060ipn.usp  (Helvetica, 6 point, italic, portrait)

                                   1

                              Display a Soft Font


        The optional "printer" argument lets you select a printer port to 
        send the sample sheet to.  DISPFONT recognizes the standard three 
        parallel printer ports: LPT1, LPT2, & LPT3. If no printer port is 
        included on the command line DISPFONT defaults to LPT1. The serial 
        printer ports, (COM1 or COM2), are not supported!

        The optional "-s" argument is used to suppress the printing of a 
        symbol table.  If the "-s" option is NOT used you can use the "-a" 
        option to select an alphabetic symbol map, instead of a decimal one.
        The line spacing the program uses can now also be controlled using 
        the "-#" option. Replace the "#" with any digits that specify how 
        many 48ths of an inch you want to move on each carriage return. Thus 
        "-24" sets the line spacing to 2 lines per inch, "-8" gives 6 lines
        per inch. When no symbol table is printed you have more room for your 
        customized text.  (See the section on Varying The Sample Text for an 
        explanation of this feature.)

        A typical sample font sheet would look as follows:

        Ŀ
                                                                      
           File: ro300rpn.usp, Roman-Times: 30 pt, portrait           
                                                                      
           abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz |[]{};:`"                       
           ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ                                 
           0123456789 `~!@#$%^&*()-_=+\,.<>?/                         
                                                                      
           This is sample text that you can change.                   
           Edit this file with any ASCII text editor,                 
           and your text will be printed.                             
                                                                      
           33=!  34="  35=#  36=$ 37=% 38=& 39=' 40=( 41=)            
           42=*  43=+  44=,  45=- 46=. 46=/ 48=0 49=1 50=2            
           51=3  52=4  53=5  54=6 55=7 56=8 57=9 58=: 59=;            
           60=<  61==  62=>  63=? 64=@ 65=A 66=B 67=C 68=D            
                                 .                                    
                                 .                                    
           123={ 124=| 125=} 126=~                                    
                                                                      
        

        DISPFONT automatically adapts itself to the font you are 
        printing.  It will adjust printer orientation and line spacing 
        based on the characteristics of that font.  While DISPFONT can 
        handle fonts of any size up to 72 points, it should be noted that 
        the symbol map will be hard to read when the font point size is 
        greater than 40 - 50 points.

        If you forget how to use DISPFONT you can always get help by 
        typing the program name with no arguments.  For example, typing 
        "dispfont" followed by a carriage return would display the fol-
        lowing:



                                   2

                              Display a Soft Font


        Ŀ
        Print sample sheet of a soft font, Version 1.4,               
        Copyright 1987 by Gary Elfring                                
                                                                      
        Use --> dispfont softfont [printer -s -a -#]                  
                                                                      
        where,   softfont is the file name of the soft font you want  
                 to print a sample sheet of                           
                 [printer] refers to an optional printer port         
                           (LPT1 default)                             
                 [-a] is the optional use alphabet in map             
                 [-s] is the optional stop symbol map flag            
                 [-#] is the optional set line spacing in 48ths       
                                                                      
        dispfont tr240rpn.usp         --> prints sample of 24 point   
                                          Times-Roman (LPT1)          
        dispfont sc100lpn.usp -15     --> prints a sample of 10 point 
                                          Script at 15/48 line spac.  
        dispfont ce200bpn.usp -s      --> prints sample of 20 point   
                                          Century bold (LPT1) with no 
                                          symbol map                  
        dispfont he100ipn.usl lpt2 -s --> prints sample of 10 point   
                                          Helvetica via LPT2 with no  
                                          symbol map                  
                                                                      
        


                                    EXAMPLES
        
        Some examples on how to use DISPFONT would probably be of help 
        now.  To print a sample sheet of an Olde English, 20 point font 
        via LPT1 you would type:

        dispfont od200rpn.usp

        To send the same font out through LPT2, instead of the default 
        LPT1, enter:

        dispfont od200rpn.usp lpt2

        To print a sample sheet of a Helvetica, 36 point bold landscape 
        font without the symbol map (assuming you have a LaserJet II) 
        type:

        dispfont hv360bpn.usl -s

        To print a sample of a Times-Roman 18 point font, showing the
        alphabet in the symbol map instead of the default Alt key codes:

        dispfont tr180rpn.usp -a

        Note that you CAN NOT combine the -a and the -s options since that
        would have no meaning! To set the line spacing you use the "-#" 

                                   3

                              Display a Soft Font

        option. The number passed, (which must be less than 49), is the number
        of 48ths of an inch to move on each carriage return. Thus 24 gives 
        24/48 ths, or 1/2 inch (2 lines per inch).  For example, to set 8 
        lines per inch type:

        dispfont uv100bpn.usp -6


                             VARYING THE SAMPLE TEXT
        
        DISPFONT lets you vary the sample alphabet and text that is 
        printed on each page.  This gives you the ability to customize 
        these sample sheets in almost any manner.

        How do you change this text?  When the DISPFONT program runs, it 
        assumes the text to be displayed on a sample sheet will be coming 
        from a disk file named DISPFONT.DAT.  If this file is not found, 
        DISPFONT prints a default display.  If DISPFONT.DAT exists all 
        text from it is sent to the printer in place of the default dis-
        play.  Note that the program automatically selects the soft font 
        before sending your text.

        DISPFONT comes with a sample DISPFONT.DAT file for you to examine 
        and modify.  This is a standard ASCII text file and can be modi-
        fied with most word processors or text editors.  Note that the 
        file must be saved as an ASCII file after being modified.

        To modify the file, first plan what you would like your sample 
        sheets to say.  A listing of the full font alphabet followed by 
        some sample text is usually best.  Use your word processor to 
        modify the text and save the result in ASCII format.  To check 
        the format you can use the DOS TYPE command.  Just enter:

        type dispfont.dat

        You should see a complete listing of the text you just entered 
        with no special or "funny" characters on your PC screen.  If this 
        is not the case the file has probably not been saved in ASCII.  
        (As a last resort you can use the EDLIN program supplied with DOS 
        to edit the file.  This guarantees you will have an ASCII file.)

        DISPFONT expects to find the sample text file, DISPFONT.DAT, in 
        the current directory.  If you keep the DISPFONT utility in a 
        tools subdirectory, accessed by the environment path, you will 
        need to keep a copy of the ".DAT" file in your current working 
        subdirectory.


                               GENERAL INFORMATION
        
        DISPFONT operates by first examining the soft font to be printed.  
        It uses information from the soft font header to determine print-
        er orientation and line spacing.  DISPFONT next downloads the 
        soft font in question to your laser printer as a temporary font, 
        ID #757.  It then prints a sample sheet switching between your 
        printer's internal Courier font and the soft font.
                                   4

                              Display a Soft Font

        In the process, DISPFONT resets your printer.  This deletes all 
        temporary soft fonts there and deselects any other special fea-
        tures you have enabled.  In addition, DISPFONT downloads the soft 
        font, (in the temporary mode), as ID 757.  It is possible, (al-
        though unlikely), that this will overlay a soft font already 
        there with the same ID.  If this happens that soft font will be 
        deleted, even though it was a "permanent" font!  Finally, 
        DISPFONT sends a second reset to the printer to remove the soft 
        font it just downloaded and the margins & line spacing it set.

        DISPFONT understands the standard 25 typefaces assigned by HP, 
        (faces 0 through 24), and uses this information to print the 
        typeface name on the header line of each sample sheet.  If an 
        unknown typeface number is incorporated in a font DISPFONT will 
        extract the display font name, (the name shown on a LaserJet II 
        font print out), from that font and show that on the header line.  
        The font weight is also examined and used to determine whether a 
        font is light, normal, or bold.  Note that a number of older 
        fonts (Bitstream's in particular) do not have a correct display 
        font name.

        The display text is arranged such that most fonts up to 60 points 
        in size can be displayed.  DISPFONT adjusts the symbol map auto-
        matically based on the number of characters in a font.



        







         

        







 





 



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