What is FontMonger?

FontMonger includes four built-in font alterations: small caps, inferior, superior, and slant. You can also add custom alterations such as slanted small caps. Double-clicking on a character brings up the Alter Character dialog box, which lets you adjust a character’s height, width, and/or slant.

To create composite characters, including horizontal and diagonal fractions, you must type in the desired components in a dialog box. The ability to create fractions is a real boon, although you have to construct them individually.

FontMonger lets you copy and paste characters within a font or combine characters from different fonts. The latter capability is extremely useful if you frequently need a few characters from Zapf Dingbats, for example. You can assign specific characters to keyboard positions, and you can import black-and-white EPS graphics (such as logos) and assign them to keys. But be forewarned: Imported artwork can contain only black lilts or outlines, not strokes.

After you’ve manipulated a font, you can save it in its original format or convert into a different one (from Type 1 to TrueType, for example). For changing the format of several fonts at once, FontMonger has a Convert Batch option. Unfortunately, the batch-conversion process is clunky and confusing, a marked contrast to the program's other well-designed dialog boxes.

Instead of treating each font within a suitcase as a single entity. Font Monger sees each font as a family. For example, open the Bernhard Modern Roman font, and you see four font-family members: roman, bold, italic, and bold italic. Each style is also a separate font within the suitcase. For a basic four-style family, you generally convert the styles from the roman (or plain) font. Typefaces with more weights (such as Minion or Stone Sans) must be converted as several families. This process is incredibly confusing, and very little of it is explained in FontMonger's manual, which is woefully incomplete. The program does have context-sensitive help and technical support is excellent, which is partial compensation.

FontMonger can also export font characters as editable outlines, in either PostScript or PICT format. FontMonger's PostScript outlines are faithful renditions of the original characters. The program does an abysmal job of converting PICT characters, however, and frequently produces character shapes that are unusable, because of their severe distortions and an overwhelming number of control points.

Abernathy, Aileen. (November 1991). FontMonger and Metamorphosis Professional. MacUser. (pgs. 81-82).

Download FontMonger for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

Is a Metamorphosis like font convertion utility, has more control over customization of font

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II