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