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Last Update: 1st August 2001 01:48
© Javier Guerrero García, 2000

What is Font Matcher?

Haven't you ever get bored browsing your font catalog? Are you searching for a printed font and you have 9000 TTF's on your CD? Font matcher helps you do that in a few minutes.

Just get a bitmap of the letter, select your fonts directory and FontMatcher will compare each TTF with the given bitmap, giving you an exact percent of how much each font matches the given bitmap. Font Matcher is completely Freeware and is available for free downloading in any of the links below. It's made under VB 6.0, so you'll need the VB 6.0 runtimes in order to get it working (surely you already have them installed).

Frecuently Asked Questions

• How do I get the bitmap?
  You can create the bitmap from any software you like (Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photopaint, Twain scanner drivers, ...) by scanner, digital camera, hand design, ... The only thing Font Matcher needs is a .BMP file with some "not-so-special" properties (see next question).

• What kind of bitmap does Font Matcher needs?
  Font Matcher uses 200x200 pixels bitmaps in Windows format (.BMP), in any color depth from 1 to 8 bits (B/W to 256 Grayscale). The letter to be recognised MUST be black (and I mean 100% black, althought antialiased edges are fully supported), and background MUST be white (again, 100% white, since Font Matcher scans the white areas of the bitmap to find the bounding box for that particular letter). Bitmaps in 24-bit mode won't work, and larger bitmaps will only display the top-left 200x200 pixels. I could implement a resampling method for downsampling larger bitmaps, but surely the people at Adobe or Corel have done it much better than I can do ;). Just use any photographic retouching software to get the correct .BMP file, and then use Font Matcher for your matching needs.

• Is it an English or a Spanish Version? Why is the software installer in Spanish?
  Font Matcher is completely translated into English. But, installation packages are fully automatically-generated, and I own a Spanish Version of Visual Basic compiler. So, the installation package is the ONLY spanish part of FontMatcher. Anyway, it works like every other installation software, so just select the directory and click the icon to install. For those spanish-students ;), everything you need to know is that "Instalar" stands for "Install", "Cambiar directorio" stands for "Change Directory", and "botón" stands for "Button". Oh yes, "Salir" means "Exit" ;) For anything else, just click "Ok" or "Yes"

• Does Font Matcher works with Type 1 Fonts?
  No. At the moment, Font Matcher only uses TTF fonts. Anyway, using Type 1 fonts (supposing you have ATM installed) shouldn't be a difficult issue, so you have two options: convert them to TTF, or mail me to ask for Type 1 support ;) If there's enough demand for that feature, I'll implement it :)

• Which file do I have to download? Full install package or just the .EXE?
  If you already have FontMatcher installed on your system, just download the .EXE and replace the old one. This will save you for a longer download. If you have never previously installed (or if you have desintalled) FontMatcher, download the full installation package, to make sure it works all right.

• Is there a Macintosh version?
  No at the moment. Can macintosh be programmed at all? :) I've never tried to program anything on one of these machines, but if there's somebody out there with programming skills, I'll be very glad to help him in porting FontMatcher to MAC platform. Anyone?

Known Issues

• Font Matcher stresses Windows to the top by installing/desinstaling fonts at high rates. If you have ATM installed, it may crash sometimes, even if Font Matcher has nothing to do with Type 1 fonts. For better results, we recomend disabling temporaly ATM, in order to get the best performance.

• Definitively disable font antialiasing in windows. You can get from 10% to 60% of speed improvement, sacrificing 2-3% of accuracy.

• The actual bottleneck is not in Font Matcher, but in your hard disk transfer rate. To get even faster rates, use RAM disks.

• In a first match, set SpeedUp to high values for fast discarding most of the fonts in the directory. In a second pass, you can set SpeedUp to lower values, to get an exact measure on how much your font matches the bitmap.

New Version 1.031!!! NT/2000/XP Supported!!!

At last but not least, we've corrected the bug for Windows NT/2000/XP, so FontMatcher v1.031 should work seamlessly in whatever windows platform you use (95/98/ME/NTWKS/NTSRV/W2K/WXP. No, it still doesn't work under Windows 3.1 :) Thank you very much to all of you for your support and patience :) The only known issue is that at installation time, the installer may prompt you to update your system files and reboot (somethink like this: "Instalar no puede continuar porque algunos archivos del sistema no estan actualizados..."). Just click "Ok", then click "Yes" to reboot, and restart the installation :)

Version 1.02 included better and faster font recognition (45 fonts/sec in disk fonts, and even 125 font/sec for installed fonts), new features (font grid for manual comparing), drag and drop from font list, and a lot of cosmetic fixes. See what's new for details.

We're still managing to get support for Type 1's. Stay tunned for 1.1 ;)

For any comments, suggestions, feature adding, etc... just drop me an e-mail and tell me whatever you want. You can also join the Beta-testing staff, or ask to be added for the Update Mailing List. And if you are a MAC developer interested in porting FontMatcher to MAC, drop me a line to start working together.

Font Matcher v1.03 Executable (160k)

Font Matcher v1.03 Full Install Package (2.3 Mb)

Font Matcher v1.03 Full Install Package Spanish Version by José Antonio G. R. (1.9 Mb)