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One benefit to uppercase: is that an ell or a one? Upper case letters are more easily distinguishable, especially on low-res devices (like the old CRTs).
by mannyv 3y ago
One benefit to uppercase: is that an ell or a one?
Upper case letters are more easily distinguishable, especially on low-res devices (like the old CRTs).
- layer8 3y agoBut is that an O or an 0? Of course, care was taken to display them differently, and the same could have been done with l and 1, as coding fonts commonly do now. No, the real reason is that upper case was customary for telegrams and then teletypes. Upper case was well established before CRT displays came into play.
- scatters 3y agoThe Remington No. 1 - which introduced the QWERTY layout - omitted number keys for 0 and 1; the O and I letter keys were considered sufficient. The No. 2 added a shift key, and a full number row.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoThe letter O is considered harmful.
- a1369209993 3y ago... `if`, `then`, `else`, `while`, `return` vs `goto`, `comefrom` ... Well, it's arguably superficially a better argument than Dijkstra's, but it doesn't account for `for`, so I'm not convinced.
- pram 3y ago0 should have a bar through it by default imo.
- mock-possum 3y agoI, i, L, l, 1, 7, j, o, O, 0, D, G, C All have characteristics that set them apart from potential lookalikes - the bar through the 0 is one excellent example - but it’s up to the font designers to take readability into account, and most designers are looking at reading English prose, not code. They don’t think “my font might be used to render a URL in a context where a user will need to make an essential security decision based on whether the string they’re reading contains an l or an I.
- flohofwoe 3y agoO or 0: that's why zero had that strike-through line.
- surge 3y agoI was going to say that, early terminals had less resolution than many TV's, in the early days, especially as graphics drivers weren't standardized yet or had CPU/Memory constraints on how many pixels it could draw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_display_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_display_standard
- somat 3y agoThe neat thing about crt terminals, or really any monochrome crt. is that because they don't use shadow masks. The text is crisp. Really good looking, Much more so than one would expect given the low resolution. Especially compared to text on a color crt. I sometimes wish monochrome displays were more of a thing. There is e-paper tech and text on it looks great for exactly the same reasons. but I would like to see what a high resolution monochrome LCD or oled display could do.
- toast0 3y ago> but I would like to see what a high resolution monochrome LCD or oled display could do. Monochrome LCDs are out there, but they mostly burn a hole in your wallet. They're used in medical imaging, but there's no other mainstream market for them, so the prices are high because the unit count is low.
- smileysteve 3y agoThis issue exists in some fonts and not others; ie Sans Serif fonts are horrible for legibility