A HyperCard Stack Hides a Custom Bitmap Font in Its Resource Fork
Embedding a bitmap font in your HyperCard stack
I've loved HyperCard since childhood, and now I'm digging into its guts. I discovered that the Concentration 2.2 stack embedded a custom bitmap font via Mac resources. After creating an icon to ensure a resource fork, I opened the stack in ResEdit and copied the FOND and nfnt resources from the Jeff-Nichols 72 font. A HyperTalk command, set textFont of card field 1 to "Jeff-Nichols", made the ornate uppercase font display. Embedding fonts enables dynamic text and breaks the 32x32 icon limit.
HyperCard always felt like a walled garden that was unique compared to “real” Macintosh programs, so I just never tried to use a real tool like ResEdit on a stack. Turns out it’s incredibly consistent with the rest of 16-bit Appledom.