NewDeal Hot Tip 1400
FontsSome fonts, like Campfire or Cooper Black hollow, give the message "Too much outline data" when trying to convert to Newdeal format with AllType.
There are two potential problems with converting fonts into Newdeal format, and AllType can have either of them. MicroLogic's converter or the Nimbus Font Converter can, too.
First, the program can run out of memory during conversion. Some formats are larger than others for the same font (e.g. Adobe PostScript Type 1 is larger than many and requires more memory to convert because it is encrypted).
Second, Newdeal has limits on the amount of data that a single font can have. The characters 32-127 are one group, and 128-255 are another. Normal ASCII is one half (0x20-0x7f), the extended Newdeal characters are the other (0x80-0xff). Each of these are limited to 64K. You can look at the Newdeal character set to see what is what. It is possible to have a complex font (like Campfire) which may exceed this limit.
Some public domain fonts have flaws in the data. Some are minor problems (eg. pieces of characters overlap, causing areas of the characters to invert), and some are more serious, such that the font converters cannot correctly interpret the data.
There are some fonts out there, though, that are just too big for the Newdeal engine to handle. If you get errors when using AllType, here are some things to try:
Anyway, if either the data for the characters 0x20-0x7f or 0x80-0xff are larger than 64K, Newdeal won't be able to handle it. This may be the case for some particularly complex fonts (eg. the "Igloo" font is complex because all of the little icicles at the tops of the characters). Again, this problem is worse for a V2.2 font than a V3.0 font.
Using the Nimbus Font Converter won't make any difference--it
simply converts V3.0 Nimbus-Q commands to their Newdeal
equivalents. It doesn't attempt to upgrade the V2.2 to V3.0.
Newdeal fonts are a bit smaller than their Nimbus-Q equivalents,
but do have the restrictions mentioned above.
ATech used to sell a font pack called "Foreign Characters Font Pack #1" that includes Cyrillic and other international fonts. The font pack sold for around $79. Unfortunately, ATech is no longer in business, though old stock of their font packages may still be found on some retail store shelves.
Last Modified 2 Mar 1999