                              General Info
  Font Edit 1.6 is a full text graphic font management and editing
program. It can display 4 text fonts plus 4 large fonts from
them for a total of 8 fonts at once on the screen. Even with 8
fonts full line draw capabilities are retained. All functions are
easy to use and a full font editor with mouse/hotkey and help 
screens is included. There are four executes (loadfont.exe,
dualon.exe, setpal.exe, makefont.exe) for use with system calls.
  To understand these functions some theory on dual fonts is
needed. Each font is 255 characters with character 256 reserved.
With dual fonts you have 510 characters to work with. Each 
character is a 8x16 pixel bitmap. Characters C0 through DF are the
blend characters in VGA and will use the ninth bit. VGA characters
are 9x16 pixel with the 9th bit the background color except for
the blend characters which the 9th bit is the same as the 8th. EGA
fonts are all the same (8x14).
  In dual font mode the intensity bit (attribute bit 3) selects 
witch font bank you use but it all so selects the foreground color
from the palette registers. So for tow fonts to display in the 
same color both the high and low palette registers must be the
same color.
  The palette register is 16 color registers. Register 0 through 7
are the low intensity colors (background colors) and register
8 through 15 are high intensity colors (foreground colors). In 
dual font mode bank 0 font is displayed if the intensity bit is 0 
with the low intensity color and bank 1 font is displayed if the 
intensity bit is 1 with the high intensity color. This means that
the low and high palette registers have to be set to the same 
color to display both fonts in the same color. So to display both 
fonts in yellow both palettes 6 and 14 must be set to color 63. 
The palette registers can be set to one of 64 colors from the DAC
(0 through 63).
  Once you have set the palettes the lib will manage the attribute
bit for the proper color. NOTE: the palette must be reset to the
right colors when you exit. If you use the executes for font 
control you the programmer must keep track of the attribute bit.
For color control and editing look for VGA11B.ZIP (Vgaedit 1.1B)
a fine VGA color editor with over 256k color capacity. EGA will
only use the first 64 colors in the DAC and is note changeable.
  With dual fonts there are 64 blend characters 32 (C0 through DF)
in each bank. Only one set is needed for line draw leaving one
set for something else. A 2x2 bit map requires 16 characters to
produce every combination possible. Load_emulate loads this bit 
map combination into one of the banks in characters C0 through 
CF. These I use to produce the large fonts reproducing the bit 
map of the character you wish to display in a 4x8 character size. 
And to draw the clown found in the demo. Since any character is a 
8x16 bit map you can with some editing produce drawings with the
resolution of 160x50 pixels.
  With makefont I produce a multi font or two 96 character fonts
in one bank. They are managed so that no line draw or blend
characters are used and with the lib are as easy to use as just
calling one of four fonts and will all (4 standard and 4 large)
display at once.
  The palette needs to be blocked from resetting to default
colors in there is a mode reset. This is done with enable_reset()
or resetpal.exe.
  Init_multi_font() will set up and manage all dual font modes
with one function. It loads both font banks and the palette and
sets the palette to the 8 upper colors. With this function you
can code and not worry about the colors not being right in your
program.

   Installation is easy just unzip FONTED15.ZIP and from that 
directory or disk type install at the prompt. Then follow the 
instructions. Font Edit can be deinstalled just as easy. 
Again use install.exe from the distribution disk or if zipped 
unzip to a temp directory and run from there. Fontedit.doc can be 
read or printed with readocs.exe. It is a text file reader/printer 
and will read or print a text file.

  Simple Windows 1.8 is required to compile this tutor and can be 
gotten at your web site (see support).

  This program and utility were compiled on a 386 clone with the 
286 instruction set. It requires a 286 PC or compatible DOS 4.1
or higher, and MS mouse, EGA or higher, and a 9 pin dot matrix  
printer. 



