New functions focusing on manipulation of encodings and character quality improvement are the highlights of this release.

Encoding

Many customers are now using fonts generated with our AFP Font converter in MS Word and other Office products. Now they have a convenient way to manipulate code pages for ANSI encodings.

When you display an EBCDIC encoded font and you change to ANSI, then all characters which don't have an encoding will be displayed in red. You can move characters using drag-and drop to change the encoding.

You can use this function to change the encoding by using a pre-defined code page. This also allows you to convert fonts which are not coded fonts.

Character Outline

Functions to improve character quality are included in this new version. Previously converted fonts where used to view AFP documents. The quality of fonts is satisfactory for displaying the converted fonts at their designed size. Most fonts have sizes of 8, 10 or 12 points. But if you use large font sizes, then zig-zags are visible.

With the increased use of converted fonts in MS Word and Office Products, functions were in demand to remove those zig-zags and to smooth the character shapes. The new release has them:

Choosing the Edit outline character menu (or simply hold SHIFT and double click) let you edit the outline of the characters.

Using this tool bar you can smooth character shapes and straighten lines.

High performance laser printers (several hundreds of pages per minute) need usually bitmapped fonts. In contrast modern operating systems with graphical user interfaces such as Microsoft Windows use scalable fonts. Characters in these fonts are no longer defined by pixels but by outlines (TrueType of Microsoft, Type1 of Adobe). So characters can be displayed with high quality independent of the output device resolution.

Programs generating for example AFP printer resources (overlays, page segments, pagedefs) or proof-printing AFP output under Windows need the AFP fonts in outline format to get real WYSIWYG quality. Simply substituting an AFP font with an available TrueType or Type1 font does not guarantee that characters on screen match those on paper printed by the AFP printer.

The converted font must be installed before it can be used. For Adobe-Type1-Fonts this requires Adobe Type Manager (ATM) on your system. ATM is the font renderer converting Adobe Type1 fonts to bitmaps displayed or printed on the output device.

 Functions to assist conversion

Convert AFP font Choose an AFP coded font and convert it into Adobe-Type1-Format or Microsoft's True-Type-Format. in Version 3.0. Select a code page and character set for conversion.	Show Character name This toggles the display of character names in the afp font display. The name appears like this when the mouse is positioned over a character box. You can also use the character window in the tool to localte characters by name.
Display AFP font Choose an AFP character set and display it. You will get a view of the character set and for a more detailed view double-click the character cell.
Conversion into Microsoft's True-Type-Format Conversion, Installation, Remove, or View is set up for Microsoft's True-Type-Font format.	Conversion into Adobe's Type-1-Format Conversion, Installation, Remove, or View is set up for Adobe's Type-1-Font format.
Conversion using EBCDIC encoding The original encoding of the font is used. in Version 3.0	Conversion using ANSI Encoding A cutomized encoding is used. The encoding can be changed using drag-and-drop. in Version 3.0

 Functions to assist installation

Install converted Font Choose an Adobe-Type1-Font or True-Type-Font and install it appropriately. The font is now available in Windows.	Remove font from Windows Choose an Adobe-Type1-Font or True-Type-Font and delete it appropriately. The font is no longer available in Windows.
Display converted and installed fonts Choose an Adobe-Type1-Font or True-Type-Font and display it.	Print font The font is printed as it is displayed on screen.