ANSI/ASCII Converter Blog

New TheDraw .TDF ANSI & ASCII Fonts for the Month of December 2014

Well, we left the 700 mark far behind us and moving quickly forward to the 800 mark, well, technically we are already beyond that mark as well, if we would consider each font within a multi-fonts set as single "font".

Last month was the most productive month of all with regards to new editions as well as extensions of already existing fonts.

I also used some of the fonts for some new ANSIs of mine. Check out these:

ANSI Editor Programming Novella

I am also making progress with my "Ansi Text Editor (ATE)" tool. I just solved a major resources problem, which caused the tool to eat up enormous amounts of memory and then eventually crashed. Well, yeah, it had to do with the fact that there are hundreds of ANSI fonts to manage, but still….

I was first so naïve to believe that an application has automatically write permissions to its own program directory. I wanted to store the index in simple text format and the previews as plain bitmap files, but nope, you cannot. My second approach was to dump stuff somewhere into the App Data hell hole, which opened a whole other can or worms for me. Even the "Application Setup Management Wizard" warned and discouraged me to dump stuff there, which I found a little bit disturbing (p.s. the \Users\USERNAME\AppData\... used to be "\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\..." and "\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\..." in Windows 95 to Windows XP).

Anyhow, I then moved away from individual preview image files and plain text index (third approach) and put everything into a MS SQL Compact 3.5 Database. So far, so good, The Data Wizard in Visual Studio made integration fairly simple. It auto generated code with classes and methods to access the data in the database. However, I always ended up with the entire database loaded into memory, which is by now already over 50 MB! I also got some locking issues, preventing access to data that I needed to update, so I had to run some extra code at program start to synchronize stuff, which was pretty annoying, because it made the ANSI fonts inaccessible to for a few minutes, every time to started the application.

So I decided to re-evaluate the whole thing for a fourth time and use now my own direct code to access the data in the database. Yes, that meant for me to manage a lot more custom code of mine, but then hell, I also had to dump the standard "viewer" controls (ListView, DatagridView etc.) and write my own custom ones as well, because with the standard control did I also ended up with everything loaded into memory all the time. Now with the custom code, the controls are "buffered", meaning, I only load that, what the user currently sees. Once the user scrolls, it's dumping the stuff that moves out of view and loads what is now visible. Also no more locking issue, which made the whole initialization crap at program start unnecessary, yeah.

So where are things stored now?

Font files and fonts collection index database which also includes the small and full image previews is for initial installations installed to "C:\ANSIFonts", if the "All Users" option was chosen during the setup (which I strongly recommend using). But, if the "Current User Only" option is selected, I have not much of a choice and must dump stuff again into the "\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\.." folder. There it uses the same folder name as program directory name chosen by the user for the main application and a sub folder called ANSIFonts. However, regardless if installed for "All Users" or "Current User Only", there is the option to change the location of the fonts folder manually via the "View\Settings" screen of the Editor Application itself. Future program updates will then automatically use that location for font data updates.

System fonts and the System Fonts index database on the other hand are by default installed in the "\ProgramData\AnsiTextEditor\Fnt" folder. I believe the "\ProgramData" location was introduced with Windows 7 (or maybe Vista). It became the replacement for the "\Documents and Settings\All Users\..." location, adding even more to the confusion about where the hell Windoof stores application and user data.

I am planning to make that path location also a customizable setting to allow folks to store the stuff wherever the hell they want. I for example started to install many applications outside the "Program Files" and "Program Files (x86)" folder to a local folder called "Programs" and "Application Data" to "Documents" (e.g. "\Documents\ANSIFonts"), if an application allows it.

New ANSI & ASCII Fonts for TheDraw and ATE

CRIMRING.TDF.ZIP
FAITH.TDF.ZIP
LEGACY.TDF.ZIP

MIRROW2.TDF.ZIP
NICE.TDF.ZIP
HARLOT.TDF.ZIP

HOTBOX.TDF.ZIP
KFC.TDF.ZIP
SPASTIC4.TDF.ZIP

SUPER.TDF.ZIP
ILUSION3.TDF.ZIP
SUNYSHNE.TDF.ZIP

ENERGY.TDF.ZIP
PANGEA.TDF.ZIP
SPYRIT.TDF.ZIP

ANGLDUST.TDF.ZIP
FIELDS.TDF.ZIP
STRABERY.TDF.ZIP

HELIUM.TDF.ZIP
RAZOR2.TDF.ZIP
TOXIC.TDF.ZIP

GUILD.TDF.ZIP
GUILD2.TDF.ZIP
MAGAZINE.TDF.ZIP

BEAST.TDF.ZIP
R.TDF.ZIP
TUSSE.TDF.ZIP

CAPITAL.TDF.ZIP
COLOSEUM.TDF.ZIP
KNIGHTS.TDF.ZIP

BLEV.TDF.ZIP
EBERUS.TDF.ZIP
FREESIDE.TDF.ZIP

CLOSED.TDF.ZIP
CONTINUM.TDF.ZIP
SMART.TDF.ZIP

AMBUSHS.TDF.ZIP
PHARCYDE.TDF.ZIP
ROUND.TDF.ZIP

CRISIS.TDF.ZIP
UNION.TDF.ZIP
UNSANE.TDF.ZIP

MERRY.TDF.ZIP
PSYCHO2.TDF.ZIP
USER2.TDF.ZIP

CCIN.TDF.ZIP
FUNGI.TDF.ZIP
RADIANCE.TDF.ZIP

SENSE.TDF.ZIP
STASIS.TDF.ZIP
UPCOR.TDF.ZIP

AMBUSH2.TDF.ZIP
CARDINAL.TDF.ZIP
DARKLAND.TDF.ZIP

BISMARCK.TDF.ZIP
DESERT.TDF.ZIP
SOCIETY.TDF.ZIP

PARTY.TDF.ZIP
UNION2.TDF.ZIP
VENGANCE.TDF.ZIP

CARBON.TDF.ZIP
MERCURY2.TDF.ZIP
SAC.TDF.ZIP

MERCURY3.TDF.ZIP
UNO.TDF.ZIP
BOXFIGHT.TDF.ZIP

DENIED.TDF.ZIP
ECO.TDF.ZIP
EXODUS.TDF.ZIP

HUNTER.TDF.ZIP
INET.TDF.ZIP
TUC.TDF.ZIP

APOCALII.TDF.ZIP
APOTM.TDF.ZIP
GREENIE.TDF.ZIP

MINDBEND.TDF.ZIP
RAZOR3.TDF.ZIP
REBELL.TDF.ZIP

HIDDEN.TDF.ZIP
INCH.TDF.ZIP
SONIC.TDF.ZIP

ACCESS.TDF.ZIP
CHAZEROG.TDF.ZIP
CHAMBER.TDF.ZIP

WATCHDOG.TDF.ZIP
FUNDBIRD.TDF.ZIP
OUTLINEX.TDF.ZIP

RUNNER.TDF.ZIP
AFTRDARK.TDF.ZIP
CYANID.TDF.ZIP

MINDSTAT.TDF.ZIP
NORTHERN.TDF.ZIP
OBVLRDSM.TDF.ZIP

VIRTACXS.TDF.ZIP
CORPSE.TDF.ZIP
FBR.TDF.ZIP

OBLIVRED.TDF.ZIP
 
 

Want even more? Checkout my entire collection of TheDraw ANSI & ASCII Fonts.

Enjoy!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

ANSI Fonts Related Posts

• TheDraw ANSI Fonts Collection Roll-Up
• TheDraw ANSI Fonts Update for November 2014
• .TDF TheDraw ANSI Fonts Tool V1.3.0 Release
• TheDraw Fonts Update 10-2014
• TheDraw (TDF) Fonts Tool Version 1.2 Release
• TheDraw Fonts Update 09-2014
• New TheDraw .TDF ANSI Fonts Update 07-08, 2014
• ATE – Ansi Text Editor 1.0Beta
• .TDF TheDraw Fonts File Tool
• TheDraw Fonts File (.TDF) Specifications
• … And More TheDraw ANSI & ASCII Fonts!
• TheDraw Fonts Collection Revamp and Extension

New TheDraw .TDF ANSI & ASCII Fonts for the Month of December 2014 Well, we left the 700 mark far behind us and moving quickly forward to the 800 mark, well, technically we are already beyond that mark as well, if we would consider each font within a multi-fonts set as single "font". Last month was the most productive month of all with regards to new editions as well as extensions of already existing fonts. I also used some of the fonts for some new ANSIs of mine. Check out these: ANSI Editor Programming Novella I am also making progress with my "Ansi Text Editor (ATE)" tool. I just solved a major resources problem, which caused the tool to eat up enormous amounts of memory and then eventually crashed. Well, yeah, it had to do with the fact that there are hundreds of ANSI fonts to manage, but still…. I was first so naïve to believe that an application has automatically write permissions to its own program directory. I wanted to store the index in simple text format and the previews as plain bitmap files, but nope, you cannot. My second approach was to dump stuff somewhere into the App Data hell hole, which opened a whole other can or worms for me. Even the "Application Setup Management Wizard" warned and discouraged me to dump stuff there, which I found a little bit disturbing (p.s. the \Users\USERNAME\AppData\... used to be "\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\..." and "\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\..." in[...]
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