When GEOS first came out, the two most exciting capabilities were the ability to incorporate graphics with text and "setting" that text in a variety of fonts. Not only a variety of type styles (bold, italic, outline, reverse, etc.), but of size as well. With the release of geoFont considerable flex- ibility for producing good-looking documents was realized. There have been other font editors around, but none to surpass geoFont til now.

Another font editor was created by a very young Jim Collette and up- loaded to Q-Link. At the time he was 13, which is mind-boggling to this non-programmer. He refined his editor to version 2.2 which won 3rd place in the BSW programming con- test. Now Jim has released version 2.4 of his editor for sale with a two- sided disk of fonts. The 33 fonts are by Bruce Gilson and give the user a large variety of styles and sizes. Even without the fonts, the price of the disk is worth it (if you take using fonts seriously) just to get the editor.

Font Editor 2.4 has all the features of geoFont with important additions:

1. Photo scrap support. This means you can design letters in geoPaint and paste them in the appropriate place. I have digitized sheets of complicated typefaces with Computereyes for accurate construc- tion of the letters. Sections of geoPaint borders or other clip art can be pasted to font characters also.

2. Stash and retrieve buffer. This is a real time-saver. Draw an O, stash to the buffer and retrieve at the C or G locations. This gives you the basic structure of the letters which can then be altered with minor changes.

3. Horizontal and vertical flip- ping. Another time saver when used with the buffer. Have you noticed how a lower case n looks like an upside down and flipped u? Flip a lower case b to d to p to q and so on. Some adjustments may be necessary after flipping, stashing and retrieving, but the basic letter has been quickly drawn once for several characters.

4. Reverse characters. Instantly turn a black on white letter to a white letter on black background. A reverse alphabet can be effective when constructed properly. Leave a black line on the top of the letters and make a plain black one-pixel space for between characters.

5. Preview option. Print out the font as you work to see how the alphabet is looking. If a letter isn't compatible with the majority, you will notice it right away. Print in plain, bold, italic, outline or reverse without exiting to use geoWrite. The alpabet also prints to the screen for another view.

6. Font Grabber. This is a handy option to convert standard Comm- odore fonts as well as from other programs to GEOS format. If you use a lot of small fonts, there are many that have been created with other programs.

7. Font scaling utility. This part of the editor was created by Bruce Gilson and is quite amazing. Take an existing font and scale it to other sizes. Any time you enlarge or reduce a bitmap image, there is distortion, so expect to do some touch-up. This feature takes practice as there are several variables to set, such as point size, width and threshold. It's a good idea to jot down the variables when you first set them since changes may be necessary. The scaling takes a long time as each character is figured out. Be careful when creating a very large font this way as it will end up too large for the applications.

It is also possible to scale one character at a time, although the point size must remain the same. This is a good way to take a normal font and make condensed and expanded versions by changing the width. When a letter doesn't look quite right, click "undo" and try a different width.

8. One feature that I particularly appreciate is the ability to change the point size of an existing font. You can create new alphabets with little effort. Size is added or subtracted from the bottom, so be sure to move each letter up before reducing.

This is also helpful if you want to adjust spacing between lines of type. By changing the point size, extra white space can be shaved from the bottom, giving a page of text tighter spacing. I had created a font with each character using the whole length of point size. Text printed with the lines too close together and didn't read well. By changing the point size from 12 to 14, I was able to add those two pixels of white space and saved the font.

Font Editor 2.4 has many more features that will become apparent when you use it. It does not save your work automatically like geoFont, so you have several saving options. One possibility is to use dummy point sizes, which lets you have quite a few same-size fonts saved to one name. This means you can have many more different fonts available than the sev- en allowed at a time. The Chameleon font by Brody Koga is done that way.

I wont give the step-by-step in- structions here for using this font editor as it comes with very good instructions. The most important ad- vice I can give is to be consistent throughout the alphabet. I have seen so many fonts where the letters don't have any relationship to one another. Use vertical or horizontal lines that are the same width throughout. You will have more satisfactory results if you create letters that use straight lines and true diagonals. This way you can take advantage of the pixel effect instead of trying to fight it. An O drawn like a box with rounded corners looks much better in bitmap format than a circle.

The four fonts above are examples that make the most of the pixel effect. Surprisingly, they are taken from reg- ular typefaces and not designed for computer use. I have found many ideas like these in type books, study- ing the various typefaces to determine which ones would be appropriate for bitmap construction.

Javelina is an example of an all- caps font that has several alternate letters such as the A, U, V, W, M and N. At the time I created the font, Font Editor 2.4 with flipping wasn't available, so the alternate letters had be individually drawn.

I always position the character to the left and then add one or two pixel spaces to the right, depending on the size of the letter. I usually don't leave more than a pixel between letters and create a one pixel space (at the up-arrow location) to use where the spacing is too tight. You can always add space this way, but if your font has too much space between letters, you're stuck.

Designing your own fonts is one of the more enjoyable and rewarding activities possible with GEOS.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Someone on Q-Link complain- ed that many fonts had made-up names that weren't descriptive of the form or gave credit to the original designer of a commercial typeface from which it is taken.

If a font designer is going to produce his or her versions of existing typefaces, naming them can become a problem. If we all have the attitude of the message writer, there would be much too much duplication of names. I can only name one font after myself.

The nature of bitmap fonts makes it impossible to exactly duplicate a letterpress typeface anyway, so (in my opinion), a new name is in order.

Berkeley Softworks started the ball rolling by naming their fonts in the first font pak after streets in Berkeley. Others are descriptive, such as Bubble and Stadium.

Although most of my font names are descriptive, I named the 12 on the RUN Power Pak disk after streets in Yuma. I studied a street map until I found names that seemed to fit the style of letters. Bruce Gilson named his fonts after rivers. You could name them after family mem- bers, friends, pets, flowers, -- any number of people and things.

I prefer descriptive names which can also be creative. An Art Deco style alphabet could be named Bauhaus, and an Art Nou- veau style, Tiffany. A font that is reminiscent of mexican style might be named Tijuana, Burrito, or Sombrero. Indian style could be Navaho or Wigwam.

It's not really so important how you arrive at the name as long as it is personal and you feel it fits. If your font is well- designed and comes into popular use, the name will bring the image of what you've created to mind. Then, future font designers will copy and name their creations after your work.