INTRODUCTION

FontHackV is a font substitution hack for Palm OS5, it is absolutely free :)
It is intended to provide the same functionality of the good old FontHack123
on OS5, because FontHack123 only works for OS4 and below.

RELEASE HISTORY

May 04, 2004 v1.03
Add: Support applications on card by shortcut(e.g: PowerRun and ZLanucher's shortcut).

Mar 03, 2004 v1.02
BUGFIX: FntGetFont() will return incorrect font id when FontHackV is
active. fixed.

Jan 08, 2004 v1.01
BUGFIX: Changing the font mapping for “All Applications” had no effect
to the applications with custom font settings. fixed.

Jan 07, 2004 v1.0
Initial release.

REQUIREMENTS

FontHackV works ONLY on Palm OS5 devices. No other Palm OS versions
are supported at this point. FontHackV must be managed using YAHM
(Yet Another Hack Master, http://yahm.palmoid.com). It is not compatible
with other hack managers such as TealMaster. For more information about
OS5 native hack APIs, please visit the YAHM website.

INSTALLATION

Install FontHackV.prc and the font pdb files(not included) to your Palm device.
Please deactivate and remove previous versions of FontHackV before installing
the new version!!!

Note: If you delete FontHackV in YAHM, the fonts for FontHackV will also
be removed, so I suggest that you use a file manager (e.g., McFile or FileZ)
to remove only FontHackV.prc and FontHackV_DB.pdb when upgrading to a new version.

OPERATION

Configuring:
Open the hack configuration screen in YAHM(click the "+" button beside
FontHackV, or select FontHackV first, then click the "Config" button at the
bottom), select a specific application or "All applications" and specify the
fonts that you would like to substitute, then press OK.

Activating:
Activate the hack in YAHM by checking the checkbox on the left of FontHackV.

OBTAINING FONTS

No fonts are currently included with FontHackV and I haven’t written any
tools to create FontHackV fonts, but it’s easy to obtain font files by either
converting the fonts for FontHack123 or generating them with
PalmFontConv(A free open source Palm font converter. More details below).

(1) Converting existing fonts for FontHack123

This section is contributed by tian100 on TomPDA.com.

If you have the fonts for FontHack123 (many of them are freely available on
the web), you can easily create fonts for FontHackV using two free programs:
Palm Font Extractor (http://www.vak.ru/pub/palm/fextract13.zip)
and PilRC (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pilrc/).

First, extract the fonts for FontHack123 into .pfn files (A pfn file is a text
file that defines Palm font data. It can be modified using any text editor, e.g.,
notepad). For example, fextract will output two files from Handera22b.pdb:
a-11x11.pfn and a-22x22.pfn for low and high resolutions respectively.
All you need to do is type in the command console:

c:\>fextract handera22b.pdb

Note: fextract also creates two pft files of the same name. They are binary
font files. We will only use the pfn files for the subsequent steps.

Second, create a project file for PilRC. The project file is a text file with
the extension ".rcp". For example, we can name it handera22b.rcp.
In the RCP file, type the following:

FONTFAMILY ID 8888 FONTID 200 LOCALE "enUS"
BEGIN
FONT "a-11x11.pfn" DENSITY 72
FONT "a-22x22.pfn" DENSITY 144
END

The first line defines the FontFamilyID and FontID. This line will be the same
for all fonts. The density values for lowres and hires should also stay the
same.
When creating your own rcp files, use the same format and change the name
of the pfn files in the example.

Note: your high density glyphs should have exactly twice the width and height
of their low density counterparts. The pfn files created by fextract always
satisfy this requirement, but if you are manually creating your own fonts or
modifying the font files, make sure they have the correct dimensions, otherwise
PilRC will not be able to compile them.

Third, use PilRC to create the pdb file. Yes, pilrc CAN output .pdb font files
that can be directly installed on your Palm. Here is how you do it:

c:\>pilrc -ro -creator fHKv -type Font -LE32 handera22b.rcp handera22Bold.pdb

(2) Using PalmFontConv to create fonts from Windows fonts.

This section is contributed by locutus on TomPDA.com.

PalmFontConv (http://sourceforge.net/projects/palmfontconv/) is a collection
of free open source font generation tools written by Alexander Pruss. You can
download it from its SourceForge website or PalmGear:
http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=software.showsoftware&prodID=52361

PalmFontConv needs the ActiveTcl runtime(http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActiveTcl/)
for its graphical frontend. Download ActiveTcl from the ActiveState website.
The latest version at the time of writing is 8.4.5 (direct download link for
the setup file):
http://downloads.activestate.com/ActiveTcl/Windows/8.4.5/ActiveTcl8.4.5.0-win32-ix86-83642.exe

Install ActiveTcl and PalmFontConv, go to the PalmFontConv directory, and double click
toFontHackV.tcl to run. The interface is very simple and intuitive, so I won't
elaborate here:)

FOR DEVELOPER

FontHackV has used 200 to 207 font ids, if your application need use custom font, please don't use
these font ids.