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<title>Font Builder</title>
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<h2>Font Builder</h2>
<h3>Usage</h3>
<ol>
<li>Choose a <i>primary font</i>, which will be used for as much as
it can be used for.
<li>Optionally, choose a different <i>secondary font</i> which is used
when the primary font is missing certain characters - for example,
Trebuchet doesn't include any Greek/Cyrillic/Hebrew characters, so
these will be taken from Arial Unicode MS (by default) instead.
<li>Use the <i>Preview font</i> button to see what the font looks like
by rendering the contents of the textbox. Adjust the font settings
until perfection is attained.
<li>Choose a desired <i>character list</i> - a text file containing
all the characters that must be in the final font. The standard files
are <tt>latin.txt</tt> (containing ASCII plus some accented characters,
mainly useful for non-localised text) and <tt>standard.txt</tt>
(containing Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew characters, for text that
could be in any language).
<li>Click <i>Generate texture</i>, and select a name for the <tt>.fnt</tt>
file. A <tt>.tga</tt> texture will also be generated, in the same directory
with the same name. Depending on several random coincidences, the texture
generation might be very fast or might take quite a while. When it finishes, the
excitingly patterned texture will be displayed.
<li>Save your settings through the <i>File</i> menu so that you can
easily recreate the font later.
</ol>
<h3>Unicode fonts</h3>
<p>
The font builder is intended to be used with Unicode characters.
Unfortunately, most fonts aren't. The font builder tries
to use <i>Arial Unicode MS</i> by default: this seems to
be installed by some versions of Microsoft Office, or can
be downloaded from locations such as
<a href="http://wildfiregames.com/~code/libraries/fonts/arialuni.exe">this</a> (12MB
self-extracting 7-Zip). It's probably worth getting, since it
includes almost every Unicode glyph that you could wish for.
</p><p>
Another potentially useful Unicode font is Bitstream Cyberbit
(available from <a href="ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/extras/fonts/windows/Cyberbit.ZIP">Netscape's FTP server</a>,
6MB).
</p><p>
All fonts must be installed into Windows before you can use
them in the font builder.
</p>
<h3>Font settings</h3>
<ul>
<li><b>Size</b> - size of the font in arbitrary units.
<li><b>Boldness</b> - if you don't have a proper bold variation of the
font, the boldness setting fakes it by drawing
the character several times.
<li><b>Italicness</b> - if you don't have a proper italic variaton,
the italicness setting slants it in 5-degree increments. Negative
values slant the other way.
<li><b>Tracking</b> - extra spacing in pixels added between every
non-zero-width glyph.
<li><b>Leading</b> - extra spacing in pixels between lines of text.
</ul>
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