Article # 60, added by Geoworks, historical record
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Fonts, Nimbus Font Converter, GEOS font format
There may be more documentation on the font format in the SDK, but here is some information. char 4 dup "BSWF" byte 0 ;minor version # byte 1 ;major version # word # ;size of header word FontIDs ;unique 16-bit ID word 0x1000 ;which font rasterizer to use (0x1000 == GEOS) byte FontFamily -- bit 7: must be 0 bit 6: 1 if fixed width, 0 if proportional bit 5: 1 if landscape, 0 if portrait (bitmap fonts only) bit 4: 1 if outline font, 0 if bitmap only bits 0-3: - 0 - serif (eg. URW Roman) - 1 - sans serif (eg. URW Sans) - 2 - script (eg. Shattuck Avenue) - 3 - ornamental (eg. Cooperstown) - 4 - symbol (eg. URW SymbolPS) - 5 - mono-spaced (eg. Courier) byte char 20 dup(?) The name must be NULL-terminated (and therefore can be up to 19 characters). If you have trouble getting the italic or bold versions of fonts to convert as part of the same file as the plain versions, here is some information which might help. Finding out if this is appropriate will require looking at the Nimbus font files with a disk editor of some sort, so it is not for the weak-hearted. The Nimbus Font Converter looks at several fields in the header of the Nimbus file(s) to get this: (1) offset 84: full name of font This should be the name of the font, plus any styles. For example, the original Nimbus file for the bold-italic version of URW Sans has "URW Sans Bold Italic" for this field. If there are several files that contain different styles of the same font, the 'basename' in the 'fullname' should be the same. For example, for "URW Sans", the 4 files would contain "URW Sans", "URW Sans Italic", "URW Sans Bold", and "URW Sans Bold Italic". If the 'basename' does not match, then the fonts will not be placed together. If the 'fullname' for any of the fonts is missing any part of the style, then the Nimbus Font Converter won't be able to distinguish which is which style. (2) offset 304: weight This should be the weight of the font, such as "Bold", "Extra Bold", or "Heavy". This should be set correctly so that for some fonts, the different weights of "Bold" can be distinguished. For example, many fonts may come with a "Normal" weight, and a "Bold" weight. However, some fonts may come with a "Heavy" weight instead of the "Bold". If this field is not set correctly, then the Nimbus Font Converter may have problems similar to distinguishing separate styles, as mentioned above. Some fonts that are compatible with the Nimbus Font Converter are included in ZSoft's "SoftType" program. It includes 60 or so Nimbus-Q font files, some of which are various styles of a particular font (eg. Bold, Italic, and Bold-Italic), and some of which are the same fonts that are already included with GEOS software (eg. URW Sans). There may be other sources of Nimbus-Q fonts, but this is one that we know of (because we used it for some testing of the Nimbus Font Converter.)