Font Directory Pro update reaches The Village

Can now be used by Number 6. I mean on RISC OS 6!

A new version of Font Directory Pro has been released by Elesar Ltd, bringing the software up to version 3.22.

Originally developed and sold by LOOKsystems and now being looked after by Elesar, Font Directory Pro is a popular font management package, and makes it much easier to deal with large collections of fonts than it would otherwise be using the standard font manager that comes as part of RISC OS. The package is actually a suite of applications, each with its own distinct job.

For example, one application allows control over which fonts are ‘visible’ at any given time, with the ability to enable or disable fonts dynamically, while another allows you to define ‘sets’ of fonts that are suitable for different types of job. The suite is very powerful, yet easy to get to grips with thanks to this degree of separation.

The main changes in the new version of the software are for compatibility with RISC OS 6 and versions of Select – which means it is suitable for all versions of RISC OS from 3 onwards. It can also be used under emulation, such as with the VirtualAcorn range of products or RPCEmu, but to do so it must be installed on a FileCore filing system – so that means an emulated ADFS, rather than HostFS.

Font Directory Pro costs £45.00 including VAT, but existing users of any 3.xx version can upgrade for just £22.50 – details of how to do this can be found on Elesar’s product page for the software. It can also be purchased via !Store, or offline – simply email Elesar to arrange this.

Update

Shortly after posting this, Rob Sprowson made me aware that there had been some confusion in the past about exactly why Font Directory Pro wasn’t working on RISC OS 6 – there was some suggestion on usenet and elsewhere that  ‘D format’ support had been removed from FileCore in the later RISCOS Ltd releases of the operating system.

However, this was not the case – as indicated by the floppy drive menu on those OS releases including that very format. When Rob actually looked into it in more detail, leading to the new version of the Font Directory Pro, it turned out that the problem was down to nothing more than some minor API changes that tripped up the software.

Related posts