User avatar
tealeaf

Posted Wed Jun 24, 2020 7:42 am

Having been recreating my Amiga teenage years recently, when I should have been writing, this thread and ideal has resonated with me hugely.

Does anyone know if it's possible to get WordPerfect 4.1/5.0alpha to respect the Workbench system font if it's been altered via preferences? Much as I love the default topaz, I've found that in the rather higher resolution I'm using now that the slimmer topaz6 font is vastly preferable.

I've had no problem getting Workbench and the various cli applications to use a different default font, and I was hoping that WordPerfect would honour that. Instead, it sticks to its original topaz. I've tried various approaches, including ModePro font overriding, and even replacing the topaz font on the disk itself with a renamed topaz6, but WordPerfect is still stubbornly showing the original. I'm guessing that the font is hardcoded into the binary.

Still, if anyone knows, or can imagine, a trick that I might have missed to override or replace WordPerfect's base font then I'd love to hear it!

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Jun 24, 2020 9:01 am

@tealeaf I will pull out my manual later and scan to see if I can find anything around what you describe. I can also install it to one of my machines that's running RTG/1024x768 with custom fonts and see if I can help. Seems odd that it would be hard-coded. Do you mean specifically the menus, or the text you type - or all of it?

User avatar
tealeaf

Posted Thu Jun 25, 2020 3:01 am

intric8 wrote:
Wed Jun 24, 2020 9:01 am
@tealeaf I will pull out my manual later and scan to see if I can find anything around what you describe. I can also install it to one of my machines that's running RTG/1024x768 with custom fonts and see if I can help. Seems odd that it would be hard-coded. Do you mean specifically the menus, or the text you type - or all of it?
Thanks! I mean the text you type, although I was anticipating the menus as well. (The menus I could live with, but it's the main body text that I really care about.)

I was fully prepared -- and actually happy -- that WordPerfect wasn't based around changing fonts in the text, but I was expecting that changing the Workbench system/application fonts in the preferences would be reflected in WordPerfect itself.

As I said, I played around with ModePro, but could only get the font in the window titlebar (under Workbench) to change, not anything actually 'in' WordPerfect. (Having said that, it was the first time I'd used ModePro, so I may be doing something wrong. I hope so!)

Perfectly happy for a 'hacky' solution, even if it's not supported by WordPerfect itself. (I was actually a little surprised, when I saw that there was a 'fonts' drawer on the main WP: adf containing the topaz font, that it didn't work to overwrite that with topaz6.)

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu Jun 25, 2020 2:32 pm

@tealeaf

I opened up the massive 3-ring binder manual and there really isn't a lot about fonts. Interestingly, it's a lot more like the kind of setup I might expect to find on the C128. You might notice there is a "Preview" mode. I don't have the Print disk installed at the moment, but by holding down CTRL and F8, that's supposed to invoke a Fonts menu. For printing. In other words, you type with what they gave you and you can swap fonts - and preview your print - before you send it to your Printer. It's a pretty old-school way of doing things. One of my favorite C128 Word Processors does the same thing.

If you want to swap out fonts and see them in real-time, there are a ton of options in the WYSIWYG world for Amiga. I'd recommend Pen Pal, Excellence, Final Copy - heck, you probably have a few faves already.

User avatar
tealeaf

Posted Thu Jun 25, 2020 3:13 pm

I had suspected. To be honest, I'd rather live with the original topaz font -- half the point was avoiding the complexity of the more WYSIWIG editors. :)

Thanks for taking the time!

User avatar
MattX
Stargard, Poland

Posted Tue Nov 09, 2021 8:04 am

I'm sorry if I'm necroposting, but this is an excelent thread. I was so intrigued by Amiga's WordPerfect compatibility with modern word processors that are able to import old WP format files that I had to test it myself. I created a formatted text file with Amiga's WP 4.1.12 and save it as Amiga WP file and IBM WP file. Then I opened it with Libre Office Community Edition on my Solus OS (Linux). My own observations are:

- Amiga and IBM WP files look the same
- bold, italic, underline styles are fine
- tabs are fine
- centering and flush right doesn't work, so the only way to implement it somehow is using tabs instead to position the text lines where we want them to be

I'm pretty impressed that it works at least with basic text formatting, so I understend why Intric8 likes the WP so much and it's great that modern word processors still can open this old format.

There's an another idea how to format text on the Amiga to have it formatted when opened on PC: MARKDOWN
Markdown syntax is very easy to understand and supports some more stuff than basic text formatting like lists, various size headers etc.

For people who never heard about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

You can play with online Markdown editor: https://stackedit.io/app#

User avatar
stevelord

Posted Wed Nov 10, 2021 2:58 am

I use Markdown extensively across my machines. In fact, a lot of my newsletter drafting is done in Final Writer, Redit or TextEdit. When I have non-work things to try, I try to do them on the Amiga. It's often slower than just opening up LibreOffice or whatever modern app does the same thing but I often enjoy the process more.

User avatar
MattX
Stargard, Poland

Posted Wed Nov 10, 2021 1:27 pm

stevelord wrote:
Wed Nov 10, 2021 2:58 am
I use Markdown extensively across my machines.
That's great to hear, because it seems to be the most effective way to simply format a big chunk of text without having to worry about special software and stuff. The only thing we need now is some Markdown viewer for classic Amigas. Something lightweight to use on OS1.x too. I got some experience with Markdown editors and note taking apps on Linux like Mark Text or Obsidian and I really see this language as the best solution for text transfer between old and new hardware.

User avatar
stevelord

Posted Wed Nov 10, 2021 4:17 pm

MattX wrote:
Wed Nov 10, 2021 1:27 pm
The only thing we need now is some Markdown viewer for classic Amigas.
Wellll... AmiGemini is open source, it could work as a starting point...

User avatar
dddaaannn

Posted Thu Nov 11, 2021 1:08 am

Is there an open source clone of MultiView yet? Seems like the right place to add a Markdown viewer.

A Markdown-to-AmigaGuide converter would be compelling. I wouldn't underestimate the complexity of parsing Markdown properly but it might be feasible to start with an open source library and a subset of the syntax.

Most modern tools I use to produce Markdown do inline formatting: the syntax chars are still visible, but they trigger formatting that represents what the syntax represents. I've gotten so used to it I rarely bother with rendering the Markdown in a reader or a conversion to HTML. A Markdown-enhanced text editor for a vintage platform would be keen.





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