Next Previous Contents

3. Selecting fonts

The current version 1.0 of Fen2eps provides 19 different chess fonts for creating board diagrams. The outlines of the chess pieces are stored in special definition files, which have the extension `*.fed' and can be found in the `fen' directory. These files also contain information about the different heights and widths of the single ``characters''.

The fonts were downloaded from www.enpassant.dk in TrueType format and then converted to Postscript outlines with the help of Pfaedit. Please, regard that the copyright is still with their authors Armando Hernandez Marroquin, Eric Bentzen and Egon Madsen. All fonts are freeware and may be used for non-commercial purposes only!

Fen2eps does not have something like a built-in font. For maximum flexibility it always needs an external `*.fed' file where it can extract the piece outlines from. If nothing else is specified, Fen2eps looks for the font file `default.fed' which is present in the same directory as the executable. Right after unZIPing the archive, this default font file is a copy of the font ``Chess Merida'' (filename: `merida.fed').

If you don't like it, all you have to do is to overwrite the file `default.fed' with one of the other `*.fed' files. For an overview you can take a look at the list of fonts (ZIPed PS, 500KB). Afterwards, the new font is used for creating the EPS diagrams.

As an alternative, you can use the option ``-f'', followed by the name of the font definition file that should be used instead of `default.fed'.

So, replacing

cp fed/marroq.fed default.fed
fen2eps < a.fen > a.eps

you could also say

fen2eps -f fed/marroq.fed < a.fen > a.eps

which leaves the default font file untouched.


Next Previous Contents