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Supertype

Supertype, by Michael Wood (published by Digita International), redefines the font used by the PCW8256 dot-matrix printer, under CP/M or LocoScript 1. It does this by rewriting either the .EMS file (under CP/M) or the dot-matrix font file MATRIX.STD (under LocoScript).

I have not exhaustively tested the installer to see which versions of the CP/M and LocoScript startup files it can patch. It's probably safest to stick to CP/M BIOS 1.4 and LocoScript 1.20.

For pure trivia: the installation program is written in compiled Microsoft BASIC.

Fonts

Here are the 8 fonts, as supplied, with the default PCW dot-matrix font for comparison. Since Supertype is/was a commercial program, I haven't included the program itself or font files in a format directly usable on the PCW.

I have converted the bit patterns to BSD vfont format, and these are downloadable below. If you do use the vfont files you will find that they have a 'dotted' look that doesn't match the preview images; the preview images attempt to show what the font looks like when printed, while the vfont files contain the underlying data.

You'll see that some fonts contain fewer characters than the original. I suspect that the missing ones were ditched in order to free up storage space, so that the new font fitted into the space vacated by the original.

Font DownloadPreview (LocoScript above, CP/M below)
Standard PCW font
Business 1
Business 2
Business 3
Business 4
Outline
Vaudeville
Olde English
Stencil

John Elliott 2021-01-20