Enquiry from a Confused Beast...

Post general font related questions (e.g. how to install, convert and use fonts) and requests (looking for fonts, designers etc.) here.
Post Reply
Otto Blotto
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2009 2:51 am

Enquiry from a Confused Beast...

Post by Otto Blotto »

I'm positive the knowledge exists within the Genius Programmers or on the Forum to do this, altho it seems an obscure and black art science.

I have a large number of *.BCO outline files that are used to create bitmapped fonts, and the Wonderful old DOS software, circa 1989, to run them if I need to.

Does any system exist to convert such outlines into something one or more of the HighLogic products can use to build a new scaleable TT font? If not, the alternative is for me to Manufacture a 200-point font and save each character as a little picture, jpg file, and put them into the software manually. This, however, is time-consuming and not so elegant. I'm also not sure which of the editors would be best for me to use; it's not a commercial project, just me and my wittle hobby.

I do have tremendous options available to me in the old DOS software, though, including such things as defining custom symbol sets. In past years I have built any number of nice and finely hand-tuned fonts and it would be useful to get some of them into a scaleable system... altho certain ones aren't suitable to scale due to the fine detail in them.

That's not all, my new printer connects by USB and it doesn't seem possible to download fonts, which was the routine with the old HP Laserjet-4 printer, which has sadly, died. So I need to get into the TT format.

Many thanks!

-- Joe 8)
William
Top Typographer
Top Typographer
Posts: 2038
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:41 pm
Location: Worcestershire, England
Contact:

Re: Enquiry from a Confused Beast...

Post by William »

I have found the following web page.

http://webopedia.internet.com/quick_ref ... sionsb.asp

On that page is included the following.
.bco Outline font description (Bitstream)
I have not yet been able to find any more information about the .bco format.

William Overington

13 June 2009
kari
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2013 8:44 am

Re: Enquiry from a Confused Beast...

Post by kari »

Hello,

This is a bit late, but there is a solution. Use Fontware for Windows (DOS software) and make PSO outlines (FW PostScript for Windows 3.1), i.e. convert BCO to PSO. Then use Fontmonger (it reads these, there may be other software that can do this, but at least this works perfectly) and make Type 1 or TrueType fonts. The result is commercial quality and ready for typesetting.

Best regards,

Kari
Post Reply