version 3.0, March 26, 1999
Copyright ©1997-1999 Marty P. Pfeiffer at Scooter Graphics.
(background info)
Price: Free!
Virtue is my improvement of Apple Computer's "Charcoal" font appearing in Mac OS 8.
There is a lot of controversy about Charcoal. Basically, a lot of people did not want this font to appear in the Mac OS 8. A "reverse-engineered" font developed by Greg Landweber for his Aaron extension and Kaleidoscope control panel gave people a first look at Charcoal. Greg built his font from looking at various screen shots and did a good job at making a very complete font. However, the spacing information and special characters characters seemed a little off to me. It seems that Apple couldn't decide whether Charcoal should have two pixels between the letters or just one. This lead to a cramped appearance on screen.
So here's what I did: basically, I took his work and tried to space it how I would if I was making Apple's next font. I studied the "Chicago" system font and and used it as a template for my font. After about 2 hours of tinkering, I had a bitmap font that looked really good as a replacement font for Kaleidoscope. About a week later, after tinkering some more, I made even more improvements.
Starting with version 3.0, Virtue is a TrueType-only font. There are no bitmaps, instead advanced TrueType instructing creates an excellent on-screen appearance. The techniques I used to accomplish this will soon be applied to my other font creations.
There are two patches included in this package. One is for Mac OS 8.5.1 and the other is for Mac OS 8.1. Choose the one that corresponds to your system software (if you are unsure what version of the Mac OS you are running, you can check it by selecting "About the computer..." from the "Apple Menu" in the "Finder.")
The instructions for patching these system files are quite simple.
And that's it! To use Virtue, simply restart your computer and then open the "Appearance" control panel. Switch to the Virtue font (Hold down the option key if you are using Mac OS 8.1).
You don't need to pay a cent for this font. In fact, I will refuse to take any money for it at all. Please, I'm begging you, NO MONEY!!!!! If you want to spend some money, take a look at some of my other fonts previewed here and buy them from my website. I do retain all rights to this font, so don't even think about trying to sell it. I mean really, how tacky could you get.
If you would like to include Virtue on a CD or upload it to your favorite ftp site, please send me a note. I'm more than happy to allow Virtue to be distributed through different channels, I just want to be in the loop :-) Please see my End User License Agreement for details about proper use of my fonts.
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