help needed from graphics GURUS ?

The default fonts, 'font-fixed, 'font-serif and 'font-sans-serif are just words referencing a string containing the font name and you can change them to any suitable font you like that's on your system (AFAIK). To use another font in a style, just give the style's font/name the title of the font you want to use. ie... view layout [t: text "hello" font [name: "Times"]] Look at a style's font object to see what you can change with regard to fonts. For the above we get...

make object! [ name: "Times" style: none size: 12 color: 0.0.0 offset: 2x2 space: 0x0 align: 'left valign: 'top shadow: none colors: [0.0.0 255.180.55] ] The problem though is REBOL doesn't come with a font-requester, so making a cross-platform app that gives access to all of a user's fonts would be tricky... So, a question for the others here testing the beta View: Does it come with a font-requester? If not, let's make a cross-platform one. Afterall, it seems all we need is a block of strings containing the names of all the fonts on a user's system. If we've got that, we can make a font-requester, right? So, let's say at startup View looks for a file called %font-names, which contains such a block. If it doesn't find it, it runs an os-specific script to grab the names of the fonts on the system and saves them as a block to %font-names. So, next time the font-names would be there and you wouldn't have to go through the permission-to-access-directory requests. Couple that with an "update-fonts" button on the font-requester (which could be cross-platform, it using the os-specific name-grabing script for the updating), and you should have an adequate means of accessing fonts. Anyone see any problems with this? For instance, is there any OS where the font-names couldn't be accessed with a REBOL script? Just a thought, and not worth pursuing if a font-requester will be in the next View...

-- Carl Read

Hi, Carl, Just downloaded the /View beta, and I can't find one. Maybe I don't know exactly what to look for. I typed in "? fon" to see what words had "fon" in them, and got the same list as current /View. I *assume* that a font requester would have this fragment in it somewhere (call me silly).

I may not be properly understanding what you have written here, so I apologize in advance if I have misunderstood, or if I end up showing my ignorance yet again! Getting the names of the font families on the system requires access to a system resource, right? Of course, /Pro or /Command would allow one to set up such a call, but I assume you mean truly cross platform, including the regular /View (aka /View/Too-Broke-Or-Cheap-To-Pay-For-Pro-Or Possibly-Have-A-Philosophical-Beef-Against-Paying-Or-Dont-Need-Pro-Features- But-Gee-It-Would-Be-Nice-On-Occasion). Here is where I am unsure what you mean. (Or maybe I am just "hamstrung" from being a predominantly Windows user!?) I could envision a "master list" of font names, and that /View could in theory cull through the list to find what is available. However, (and again ignorance warning in effect,) it appears as though /View "gracefully" falls back to a default font, if a font is not actually available. So a system would on first bluch appear to "support" all the fonts, but in fact would just be using default fall-backs if the actual font is not available. Maybe there is a way to detect this event. Maybe you or another /View guru would know this. Outside of calling on a system resource, the only other way I can think of to find what fonts are available on a specific machine is to use a (gulp) non-REBOL utility to create the list for REBOL. Am I way off base on this? Please someone save me from myself.

So, (somewhat redundantly) is this "os-specific" script a REBOL script or more of a non-REBOL utility? I really like your idea. I was toying with "how-to" get at this info a few weeks ago, and it wasn't obvious. I am more than willing to be further educated about this topic. Rest of Carl's message: http://www.escribe.com/internet/rebol/m25079.html Thanks for the great suggestion, Carl. I think this project would further enhance REBOL's appeal. --Scott Jones

That's why I asked if there was any reason this wouldn't work on specific OSs. On Amiga you'd just have the os-specific REBOL script look in the fonts directory and grab the names from the file-names. Font-files all over the place in Windows by any chance? Anyway, I might have a go at writing this for myself as soon as I've got some other stuff finished. It's a pretty simple concept so shouldn't be too difficult. -- Carl Read

From: "Carl Read"

Doh! Ok. I guess I got overly focused on *one* way to get the font names. *Obviously* I am not a font expert. At least on Win98, many fonts are simply located in C:\WINDOWS\FONTS. Maybe there are other locations for some programs. So two platforms would offer simple solutions. Thanks for saving me from myself. --Scott Jones

Just suck it and see... view layout [ text "Hello" font [name: "name-of-a-font-on-your-system"] ]

-- Carl Read

From: "Carl Read"

Hi, Folks, OK, I sucked, and saw .... disappointment. When I peeked at the \windows\fonts directory earlier, I had forgotten that the folder view was one of Windows fancy folders. Directory reading under DOS looks more traditional, which means font-names for the files are frequently truncated. To verify, I quickly hacked the following. Looking like either need a mapping table or GDI access ... or ... someone needs to save me from myself. Again! :-( --Scott Jones font-files: read %//windows/fonts/. font-blk: copy [] foreach font font-files [append font-blk first parse/all font "."] lo-blk: copy [] foreach font font-blk [ append lo-blk copy [text "hello" font ] append/only lo-blk append copy [name: ] copy font ] while [not tail? lo-blk] [ lo-blk: skip lo-blk 60 insert lo-blk 'return lo-blk: next lo-blk ] lo-blk: head lo-blk lo: layout lo-blk view lo

Last night I looked at the raw binary on a couple of fonts. The name is in there, but I wasn't readily able to identify a constant location nor a bracketing pair of words or symbols that would make parsing easy. (It wasn't obvious *to me*, at least.)

If they are, then perhaps it would be possible to parse out the names. Good idea! Thanks for the feedback. And BTW to Carl and Gregg: I forgot to mention, that it appears as though one can use *any* installed font as long as one uses the "proper" font name. This is ***good news***. (Warning: I only tried a few.) --Scott Jones

I'd have a go at the requester, unless someone beats me to it. (: I doubt I'd get on to it until next weekend though. Anyway, some thoughts on what refinements request-font should have... /title title-line -- change default request title. /font font-name -- default font-name or block of font-names to show as selected. /style font-style -- allow user to select a font-style. /size font-size -- allow user to select a font-size. /color font-color -- allow user to select a font's color. /shadow font-shadow -- allow user to select a shadow-size. /multi -- allow user to select more than one font. /keep -- keep previous settings. /all -- allow user selection of all of the font values - size, color etc. Given a font object can also have offset, space, align, valign and colors values, are there any of those that should also be selectable in the font requester? And should shadow be in there? And would it be possible to restrict selection to only fixed or proportional fonts? That'd require the os-dependant routine to get more than just the name of the font. Short of having REBOL measure the width of every character in every font! (: -- Carl Read