AMP Font Viewer 3.0
-------------------
 1997-2001 Alberto Martinez Perez
E-mail: alberto_mtnez@yahoo.es
WWW: http://go.to/ampsoft  -  http://ampsoft.8m.com


Contents
--------

1. Description
2. Legal stuff
3. Installation
4. Usage tips
5. Known problems and limitations
6. Notes about TTF fonts
7. Credits


1. Description
--------------

This program is an easy-to-use but powerful font manager, designed to
obtain a quick view of all installed and not installed fonts in the
system, and organize them easily in categories. Some of its features
are:

- View list of all installed fonts.
- View list of all not installed fonts in a folder.
- Delete installed fonts.
- Several options for organize the fonts in categories and manage them.
- Install one or a selection of the fonts in a folder.
- Print a custom list of installed fonts with an example of each font.
- Scratchpad area for testing the look of any font.
- Dual English/Spanish version.

See Changes.txt for changes history.

If you have any suggestion, you find a bug, etc., send me an e-mail.


2. Legal stuff
--------------

This program is freeware, but only for private use (not commercial).
For commercial use or inclusion in distributions that you gets paid
(CD's, ...) contact with the author for authorization. You can
redistribute it for free, whenever you use the original package. If you
don't have an original package, you can find it at http://go.to/ampsoft

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. The author declines responsibility for any
possible damage due to the use of this program.


3. Installation
---------------

The program is distributed in two formats:

Installer: Execute the .EXE file and follow the instructions of the
install windows.

ZIP file: Simply extract the program's files to the folder where you
want to install them, and make a shortcut to the executable file.


4. Usage tips
-------------

- When you install a font temporally, the font is available to all
  other programs until Font Viewer is closed, or until the uninstall
  temporary fonts option is used. This is is useful to avoid install
  a lot of fonts in Windows (see Windows font limit in the next
  section).

- If you organize your not installed fonts in folders by categories, you
  can easily find a font you need using the View folder option, and
  install it temporally. To organize the not installed fonts more easily,
  you can use the Move font file to folder option.

- You can view text which have more that one font in the scratchpad
  area, e.g. for compare three or four fonts. To get this, copy any text
  in the scratchpad area, change to the other font that you want to view,
  and paste the text AFTER the current text. You will see the text with
  the two fonts. If you change the font now, only the text of the first
  font changes. You can repeat this process many times to view more fonts
  at the same time.

- You can view text with have more that one color. To do this, apply
  the steps of the previous tip.

- If you put a 0 in the number of columns in the View all mode, the
  scroll bar becomes vertical instead of horizontal, but you can view 1
  column only.

- When you print the list of fonts, the program uses the number of
  columns and font size of the font List. Note that the portion of text
  viewed in the screen can be different of the portion printed.

- Try to avoid the use of the View folder options (for not installed
  fonts) in folders with more than 250-300 fonts. Font Viewer install
  temporarily these fonts, and this could be a slow process. Also, you
  can exceed the Windows font limit (See the next section for this).


5. Known problems and limitations
---------------------------------

- In some fonts, Font Viewer shows (???) instead of the name of the
  file. This is due to a error in the installation of the font in most of
  the cases, but with a very few fonts the (???) can appear although
  there are properly installed. For the same reason, these fonts are
  reported as not installed when installing new fonts.

- In Windows NT, you must login as Administrator to allow Font Viewer
  runs properly. It you login as a normal user, you can see the installed
  fonts, but some features not work, such as install new fonts.

- Windows font limit. In Windows 9x, the number of fonts that you can
  install is limited. This number is about 1000 fonts (if you have
  installed four subtypes of a font, they count as four different fonts).
  Due to this, when you use the View folder option, if the sum of
  installed and not installed fonts exceed the limit you cannot see the
  last fonts properly, since the program need to install these fonts
  temporarily.


6. Notes about TTF fonts
------------------------

- The "Default" font. In Windows 98 you can found that there is a font
  called "Default", with no subtypes or file. The only thing I know is
  that is a special font provided by Windows.

- Font subtypes. A font can have different files for different subtypes
  (bold, italic, ...). This is made to get better quality. If the font
  have only one file, Windows or the programs simulates the subtype. Due
  to that, you can install four files and get only a new font, but with
  four subtypes (usually regular, bold, italic and bold-italic).

- Different name for the same subtype. Sometimes, there is a font
  subtype that looks identical that other subtype with different name. It
  is due to the authors of the font have released different versions of
  the font with different subtype name (e.g. Regular and Plain). If you
  are sure that the same subtypes look exactly, you can delete one of
  then.

- Different file names for the same font. A font don't have a unique
  file name. In other words, you can find the same font with different
  file names.


7. Credits
----------

 1997-2001 Alberto Martinez Perez
E-mail: alberto_mtnez@yahoo.es

Thanks to Antonio Torralba and Rafael Barranco-Droege for their corrections
and suggestions.

Thanks to Volker J. Hellborg and Paulo Neto for their support.
