OTHER FONT TOOLS
	    by David S. Lawyer, Mar. 1997 
    (This document likely covers only a small fraction of such tools)

Font generators create softfont from font in another format.  Font
editors permit one to edit font and often to create font from
scratch.  There is an overlap between font generator and editors.
With MS Windows, which has printer drivers (which apparently deal with
font) for each printer , there is no need for font generators unless
one has a printer for which there is no driver (and the printer needs
downloadable fonts).

In 1990 PC Magazine ran an article evaluating 8 font generators.  Only
one of the programs permitted one to draw and design font from scratch
and that feature was called a "font editor".  Font generators usually
permitted some degree of "editing" such as changing the slant,
bolding, and fill characters of character sets.  With some one could
set white on black (like reverse video on CRT's).  Most were limited
to the type of fonts they dealt with.  Most converted various types of
outline fonts to bitmaps for the HP printer (PCL ?).  For example Font
Factory's "FontMaker" converted Compugraphics Intellifonts (outline)
to bitmap (or to postscript).  Bitstream's Fontware converts
Bitstream (outline) to HP, Postscript, or to Windows (perhaps
TrueType?) which then can be used on any Window-supported printer.
Some used a proprietary outline font such as Megafont.  Font generators
were often bundled with word processors (and perhaps integrated into
them).

Font editors include Fontographer (Altsys), Font Monger (Ares
Microdevelopment) and Publisher's Type Foundry (ZSoft Corp.).  In 1994
two were FontLab ($350) and Type-Designer ($120) for MS Windows.  Both
use Postscript type 1 for internal representation.  Two others are
ProFont Editor and FontGen IV+.  All they need to do is to generate
TrueType (or Bit-mapped) fonts for Windows.  

MS Windows Software Development Kit (SKD) contains a font editor for 
bit-mapped Window's Fonts.  However it probably can't create fonts 
from scratch.

There are 3 types of devices which use softfont: monitors, terminals,
and printers.  Listed here are some font editors which work for only
one of these 3 categories:

MONITORS:

Fontedit.com is an editor for MS-DOS by Michael J Mefford and is given
to subscribers of PC Magazine.  It has a graphical interface

TERMINALS:

BitFontEdit for VT and Wyse terminals is a free text interface
"editor" where one draws *'s in any ASCII file to represent glyphs.

Baby Font Designer is a set of programs for VT terminals by Sergei
Viznyuk, July, 1992.  viznyuk@mps.ohio-state.edu (but mail to him
bounced in 1997).  No source code is supplied and the object code
supplied is for the VAX/VMS.  One also must use a VT terminal to use
it.  It is superior to BitFontEdit in that you may view how the
character will actually display on the screen as you are drawing it.

VT200 Toolkit by DEC (1986) has CSEDIT for VT200 and VT300 series 
terminals.  The C source code is cluttered with escape sequences and it
will not compile on a recent gnu C compiler.  These escape code are
for formatting using an unknown word processor (perhaps on a DEC VAX).
The toolkit is copyrighted and it's not clear what free use of it is
permitted.  But since DEC has put it on it's Website for all to copy
it implies that one could use it for their own personal use.