A "font" refers to the physical shape of a set of printed characters. This Chapter explains how to exploit the ready-made AMOS Professional fonts, how to import new ones, and how to design your own fonts using the ready-made Font Editor program.
Text Fonts
Tile sets of fonts used by commands like PRINT, are known as "text fonts", and each AMOS
Professional window can have its own individual set, as required. Styles and special effects for
text fonts are controlled by instructions such as TEXT STYLE and WRITING, which are fully
explained in Chapter 5.6.
Graphic Text Fonts
Although text fonts are suitable for normal uses, an infinite variety of styles can be achieved by
exploiting the much more flexible category of fonts known as "graphic text". Text fonts are
positioned by referring to their location in terms of characters, but graphic text can be controlled
much more accurately, because it is positioned using x,y-coordinates numbered in pixels. AMOS
Professional supports the thousands of graphic fonts, available in commercial packages or in the
public domain.
ROM Fonts
There are also alternative fonts built into the Amiga's ROM chips, and these are also available for
use by the AMOS Professional system.
All fonts are referred to by an individual index number in a font list. No matter what type of font is to be used, you must first "get" it from wherever it is being stored, and then "set" it, ready for use. Users who are familiar with the AMOS system will find that the AMOS Professional system for handling fonts has been streamlined and improved. When a SET FONT command is given, the system will do an automatic search to see if the required font is already in memory, and if all is well, the specified font is immediately made available for use. If the required font is not found in the current list of available fonts, it will be loaded, but the next time it is called by SET FONT there will be no need to load it again.
GET FONTS
instruction: create a list of available fonts from System disc
Get Fonts
The GET FONTS command creates an internal list of all available fonts on the System disc, and it should always be called at least once before any changes in settings are made. In practice, you will probably want to use this instruction at the beginning of a program, so that SET FONT may be used freely at any later point.
It is very important to remember that if you are distributing run-only or compiled programs to be used by other people, and these programs make use of alternative fonts, then the required font files must be included.
E> Get Fonts
For F=0 To 10
Set Font F : T$="AMOS Professional Font: "+Str$(F)
Text 0,100,T$
Wait Key : Cls
Next F