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    Laser Patch FC Documentation

    March 4, 1997

    Copyright 1997 Randy Winchester

    This software is distributed as "CompletionWare."  If you use it,
    please contribute.  Please read the "CompletionWare" statement on page 2.

    What is Laser Patch FC?

    Laser Patch FC is a pair of utilitites for patching geoLaser and
    geoPublaser to enable them to produce foreign language characters with
    the 21 font Apple LaserWriter Plus font set.  The original versions of
    geoLaser and geoPublaser can only produce foreign language characters
    with the basic font set used by the standard Apple LaserWriter.
    Laser Patch FC can be used to install patches for the following languages:

         German
         French
         Danish
         Italian
         Swiss
         Spanish
         U.K.
         Swedish

    The GEOS font sets that work with this patch include the standard:

         LW_Roma 		Times-Roman family
         LW_Cal     	Helvetica family
         LW_Barrows 	Courier family

    and the 21 Apple LaserWriter Plus fonts:

         LW_Gianinni	AvantGarde-Book family
         LW_Bacon		Bookman-Light family
         LW_Haviland	Helvetica-Narrow family
         LW_Piedmont	New Century Schoolbook-Roman family
         LW_Cowell		Palatino-Roman family
         LW_Galey		ZapfChancery-MediumItalic

    For each font, the characters replaced from the standard encoding are:

         @ [ \ ] { | } ~

    The characters they are replaced with are different for each language.

    What files are included in the Laser Patch FC distribution?

         Laser Patch FC     Application to patch geoLaser
         Pub Patch FC     	Application to patch geoPublaser 1.8
         Font Test     	A geoWrite file that displays the special
              		characters for screen fonts, or can be
              		printed using patched versions of geoLaser.
         LW_Giannini_GeC    Screen font sets.  Currently includes font
         LW_Etc_Etc.     	sets for German, French, Italian and Swiss.

    How do I use Laser Patch FC applications?

    (NOTE: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PATCH YOUR ORIGINAL COPY OF geoLaser OR
    geoPublaser 1.8.  ONCE THEY ARE PATCHED, YOU CAN NOT RECOVER THE
    ORIGINAL VERSION.  ONLY WORK WITH COPIES OF geoLaser AND geoPublaser
    1.8!)  Start with a blank diskette.  Copy geoLaser and geoPublaser to
    the disk along with Laser Patch FC and Pub Patch FC.  Run the Laser
    Patch FC application and select the language you want to patch from
    the Patch menu.  A dialog box will appear to allow you to select the
    copy of geoLaser you will patch.  (Don't patch your original copy!!!)
    Click on the Open button and the patch will be performed.  When you
    are finished, click on the Quit menu to exit the application.  The
    same procedure applies to patching geoPublaser.

    After you exit the application, take a look at the directory of the
    disk with your patched geoLaser or geoPublaser 1.8.  You will see that
    the file has been renamed to reflect the language of the patch applied
    to it, such as geoLaser German or geoPub Dutch.

    Sometimes the search algorithm for locating patch point in geoLaser or
    geoPublaser 1.8 fails and you will see a dialog box indicating that
    the copy selected can not be patched.  This happens if the copy of
    geoLaser or geoPublaser 1.8 that you are working with is corrupt.  It
    will also happen if you have patched this copy previously (which is
    the reason you should NEVER patch your original copy!).  The solution
    is to make a fresh copy of geoLaser and geoPublaser 1.8 on a blank
    diskette and start over.

    Why wasn't Laser Patch FC finished?

    I wrote Laser Patch FC for a Swiss laser printing company.  They have been
    using it successfully in their business ever since I finished it.  I
    was never paid for the effort; I opted to retain the rights to
    distribute the program.  I spent many hours editing screen character
    sets to put together a complete product.  Let's see . . . 48 screen
    font sets x 8 characters = 384 characters!  That's just German.  I
    finished editing screen characters for French, Italian and Swiss too.
    Only four more languages to go.  Only another 1536 characters to edit!
    No thanks!  My estimate of a commercial audience for this product in
    1990 was maybe two or three people.  If I charged them only a
    reasonable price for my time to edit the font sets and gave the
    applications away to them for free, they probably couldn't afford to
    buy it anyway!

    As far as technical details . . . I used Jim Collette's excellent Font
    Editor 2.0 for creating the new characters.  It has some nice features
    for cutting and pasting and scaling characters, but like most GEOS
    application that are heavy on graphics, it tends to be somewhat slow.
    That's the other reason I finished only the four screen font sets.

    I love Laser Patch FC and have edited screen fonts for my language.  May I
    contribute them to the Laser Patch FC distribution package?

    Please do!  Please consider this software "CompletionWare."  If you
    use it, please help me finish it!  If I just have a few users spend a
    little time to edit some of the unfinished fonts, eventually this
    package will be complete.  Send me email at randy@mit.edu and let me
    know which fonts/languages you have edited.  I can give you more
    information about what I need to complete the font sets, the format
    they should be in or anything else you want to know about this
    package.  I'll be happy to include your screen fonts in the
    distribution package and give you a credit for your work.  And that
    might make someone else happy, too.

    Randy Winchester

    Antigrav Toolkit

    P.O. Box 1074

    Cambridge, MA  02142