Author Topic: Font Converter: zStart and Omnicalc  (Read 5436 times)

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Offline NonstickAtom785

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Font Converter: zStart and Omnicalc
« on: March 03, 2020, 09:58:56 am »
Hey guys and gals. I'm uploading another program for Grammer. It basically let's you convert Omnicalc fonts to zStart fonts and vice versa. Be sure to read the readme in the zip. Lot's of helpful information.  8)
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Font Converter: zStart and Omnicalc
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2020, 03:08:32 pm »
How do you actually create ZStart fonts? I could never find a computer editor back in the days (there was none included with ZStart or it was missing?) and I liked ZStart fonts because they could be a different size than Omnicalc's.

Offline Xeda112358

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Re: Font Converter: zStart and Omnicalc
« Reply #2 on: March 07, 2020, 07:23:08 am »
How do you actually create ZStart fonts? I could never find a computer editor back in the days (there was none included with ZStart or it was missing?) and I liked ZStart fonts because they could be a different size than Omnicalc's.
Oh, zStart actually has a built-in font editor. The format is actually like the OS' internal format, which is sightly different from Omnicalc or BatLib font, but also slightly easier to access.

Offline NonstickAtom785

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Re: Font Converter: zStart and Omnicalc
« Reply #3 on: March 09, 2020, 10:43:29 am »
How do you actually create ZStart fonts? I could never find a computer editor back in the days (there was none included with ZStart or it was missing?) and I liked ZStart fonts because they could be a different size than Omnicalc's.

It's set up as an 8x8 sprite. The bottom row is the length of the sprite I think, I don't know really, but if you look at the bottom row of each character it's hex value 05h. I found that you don't need that there so I just removed it for 00h to save program space. They also have a header. I don't know what it is off hand though but it's 5 bytes.
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Re: Font Converter: zStart and Omnicalc
« Reply #4 on: March 09, 2020, 01:01:58 pm »
It should start with 1-byte for the width, followed by 7 bytes of data. I imagine that you can technically edit the widths of the zStart font and then the large font would also technically be variable-width on the graph-screen (The OS's format is the same for both fonts, just all the large font chars have a width of 5).

Offline NonstickAtom785

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Re: Font Converter: zStart and Omnicalc
« Reply #5 on: March 10, 2020, 09:16:12 am »
Wait. Your telling me that zStart fonts use the first byte for the width? I don't believe this to be  O.O . Have you checked out the program? When I unpacked the hex data for one of them the pattern was 8 bytes with the 7th byte being 05h always (looking forward that is). So when I convert the fonts I just ClrDraw then draw the font based off of it's tile format and then data swap it with the empty font file with the appropriate tile format. Meaning the the first byte is whatever the data that is getting swapped is. The bottom row is blank but the font still works.
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