I've been helping Deuce with testing SyncTERM in preparation for a long-due v1.00 release and I'm working on an installation package for Windows. I'd never
before really played with the alternate font support in SyncTERM (mainly because I've been running SyncTERM in Win32 console mode and "font" support only works in SDL mode), but since I was including fonts in the installation package, I wanted to verify that functionality.

SyncTERM comes with some built-in fonts (mainly standard IBM VGA and other platform fonts), but can also be configured to load external font files (e.g. *.f8, *.f16).

It's pretty cool and when working correctly, reminds me of the alternate font support that was in the Apple II software called "Delightful Dialer". This feature allows the user of SyncTERM to configure unique fonts on a per-system basis (e.g. use one font for calling Vertrauen and a different font for some other BBSes).

Even more cool (in my opinion), is the SyncTERM feature that allows the sysop to choose the font that will be used for users of his/her BBS. If there isn't a
built-in font or the sysop doesn't want to make assumptions about which alternate fonts might be installed in the user's SyncTERM, the BBS can *send* the font data to the user/SyncTERM and have it automatically selected. Also, it
can have mutiple fonts (up to 4) simultaneously active for different combinations of high/low intensity and blinking text.

Yesterday, I enabled a logon script on Vertrauen which should be unperceptable,
but if you're using a recent version of SyncTERM (in SDL 80x25 mode), you should notice a mixture of fonts now displayed (e.g. this will be in a different font from the rest of this message). Kudos to Deuce for this very cool, but not-very-well-known feature.

Sysops and software developers could be creating custom fonts for "Cool Text" as well as custom *graphics*, e.g. for door games. I think the possibilities for some cool evolutionary BBS/game experiences over Telnet/SSH/RLogin are very
possible using these features and am eager to see what others come up with.

digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #16:
"Vertrauen" (ver-trow-en) translates to "trust" in German, and was a band name. Norco, CA WX: 70.5°F, 55.0% humidity, 6 mph E wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs