Demo of FONTastic and FONTastic Plus

Mark Simonson

I just posted a video today demoing FONTastic and FONTastic Plus, two versions of the bitmap font editor for the Mac made between 1985 and 1988 by Altsys, better known for creating Fontographer and Freehand.

I imagine a few people here used these back in the eighties. As far as I know, these were the only commercial bitmap font editors for the Mac until FontLab's BitFonter in 2001.

I've got a special request: Somehow, I lost my manual for FONTastic Plus. It is nowhere to be found on the internet. As I mention in the video, I even asked Jim Von Ehr, founder of Altsys and creator of FONTastic if he had a copy. Sadly, he doesn't, nor do any of the former Altsys colleagues he checked with. I would love to get a copy of it in any form. If anyone knows where I can find a copy, let me know.

https://youtu.be/pfoF73F73Hc

Laurence Penney

Fontastic that you’re documenting your type design practice here, Mark.

Mark Simonson

Thanks!

jeremy tribby

Mark Simonson said:

I would love to get a copy of it in any form. If anyone knows where I can find a copy, let me know.

it seems a bit unlikely, but I wonder if any software manuals made it to the letterform archive as part of the emigre collection

Mark Simonson

I've checked with them, but haven't heard back yet. Zuzana used the apps, so it seems possible.

George Thomas

I still have the program. PDF of the manual for anyone who wants it.

Mark Simonson

Awesome—thank you so much for posting that, @George Thomas! You wouldn't believe how hard it's been to track this down. I guess I should have asked here before making the video.

I've got copies of FONTastic (not Plus) manuals for 1.0 and 2.0. I'm planning to scan them and upload them to the Internet Archive. There's nothing there related to any of these programs except for a scan of one of the Altsys newsletters from around 1987. I've got most of those, too, which I also plan to upload.

... And, after a quick look at the FONTastic Plus manual, I finally found the answer to the one thing I couldn't figure out when I did the video: What are you supposed to do in the Guideline plane (layer)? Clicking in the edit area does nothing, and there are no menu commands that do anything.

Turns out, you can drag new guidelines into the edit area by clicking directly on the one-pixel thick border of the edit area at the bottom (for horizontal guides) or the left (for vertical guides), the same way you drag guidelines from rulers in other apps. I don't know if I ever would have figured that out. Once added, you can also move them around or remove them by dragging them past the edge of the screen.

Mark Simonson

Apparently, the manual has been included in the FONTastic Plus download at MacintoshGarden.org since 2012. Since I was running it from a disk image of my original floppy, I never bothered to download it there. 🤦‍♂️

George Thomas

The PDF from Macintosh Garden is the one I posted. I downloaded it just for that purpose because I currently don't know where my copy is; in storage somewhere. It also saved me from having to scan it.

Mark Simonson

I noticed that when I compared them. I can't believe I didn't notice it was there when I was looking for it.

Mark Simonson

Incidentally, the FONTastic Plus manual has better, more helpful, and more in-depth information on FOND and NFNT resources than anything else I've looked at, including Inside Macintosh.