Typography in 8 bits: System fonts (2011)

http://damieng.com/blog/2011/02/20/typography-in-8-bits-system-fonts

by chesterfield • 12 years ago

104 17 12 years ago

jokoon3• 12 years ago

missing: profont

to3m• 12 years ago

The Macintosh had a 16-/32-bit CPU, and so custom 3rd-party fonts for it do not qualify for inclusion on a page of system fonts from 8-bit systems...

jokoon3• 12 years ago

I find it fits pretty well and to me it beat all the fonts listed in the article

doomlaser• 12 years ago

A fun tangential fact about the original Macintosh's system font, Chicago: it was the typeface used by Squaresoft in most of their 16-bit era Super NES RPGS (Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, etc)

damieng2• 12 years ago

They modified the upper case characters to shave 1 pixel off the height tho - presumably to fit it in an 8x8.

DanBC• 12 years ago

The Sharp MZ80k had an interesting font which included a bunch of "graphics", which were available feom the huge horrible keyboard.

http://www.1000bit.it/scheda.asp?id=101

mitosis• 12 years ago

That keyboard is wrong on so many levels.

izietto• 12 years ago

I love the commodore one!

OneOneOneOne• 12 years ago

So much nostalgia. It's funny but looking at these fonts reminds me of the good times programming these machines.

mattl• 12 years ago

Wow, so the Amstrad CPC font is very very similar to the IBM CGA font.

And to think all these years I'd thought they were using CPCs on TV :/

salgernon2• 12 years ago

I recently restored an ADDS Regent 25 terminal; it has an 8085 inside, so I'll claim it as an 8-bit system font :-)

Sorry I don't have a better picture:

http://i.imgur.com/4jR8izX.jpg

Its close to the 'Speccy' font included in cathode:

http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/

damieng2• 12 years ago

It is an interesting font although very different from the Sinclair Spectrum font. (I added a bunch of those to Cathode)

salgernon2• 12 years ago

Just to close the loop; a better picture:

https://flic.kr/p/nMA6kz

I quite like the 'l' and 'i', but the 'V' is worrisome.

mzs• 12 years ago

I've got a soft spot for the MC6847, who needs lower case or an glob-star even when you have semigraphics!

http://members.casema.nl/hhaydn/howel/Acorn/Atom/atap/charse...

I even made it a pcf, from my notes:

  $ convert charset.png -crop 256x48+0+0 +repage c6847.png
  $ convert c6847.png -crop 8x12 +repage +adjoin 'c6847g%02x.png'

Need to make B&W:

  $ convert c6847.png -threshold '1%' c6847.gif
  $ for p in c6847g??.png; do convert "$p" -threshold '1%' "`basename $p .png`".gif; done

Got gif2bdf

  $ curl -O http://czyborra.com/unifont/gif2bdf

Looked at it, decided it was safe, and patched it to hackishly get around some issues.

  @@ -5,20 +5,19 @@
   # into a handier bitmap distribution format font
   
   $[ = 1; $chars=$#ARGV; undef $/; 
  -
  +$dec = 32;
   for (@ARGV)
   {
  -     $dec = hex ($hex) if ($hex) = /([0-9A-F]{4})/ || next;
  +     $hex = sprintf("%04x", $dec);
        $_ = `giftopnm $_`;
        s/^P4\s(\d+)\s(\d+)\s/$wid=$1,$nib=$wid>>2,$ht=$2,''/e;
        $_ = unpack ("H*", $_);
        s/(.{$nib})/\n$1/g;
        $header ||= print "STARTFONT 2.1
  -FONT -Unicode-Charts-Medium-R-Normal--$ht-${ht}0-72-72-C-${wid}0-ISO10646-1
  +FONT -c6847-fixed-medium-r-normal--$ht-${ht}0-72-72-C-${wid}0-iso8859-1
   SIZE $ht 72 72
   FONTBOUNDINGBOX $wid $ht 0 0
  -STARTPROPERTIES 4
  -COPYRIGHT http://www.unicode.org/unicode/copyright.html
  +STARTPROPERTIES 3
   DEFAULT_CHAR -1
   FONT_ASCENT $ht
   FONT_DESCENT 0
  @@ -33,7 +32,10 @@
   BITMAP$_
   ENDCHAR
   ";
  -
  +     $dec = $dec + 1;
  +     if ($dec == 96) {
  +             $dec = 192;
  +     }
   }
   
   print "ENDFONT\n";

Made fonts

  $ ./gif2bdf `ls c6847g??.gif | sort` > c6847.bdf
  $ bdftopcf c6847.bdf > c6847.pcf

Typography in 8 bits: System fonts (2011)

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