2 ms·

Not totally sure what I'd use this for. Silkscreen is bigger, but is a lot more legible at small sizes. https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Silkscreen https://fo

Not totally sure what I'd use this for. Silkscreen is bigger, but is a lot more legible at small sizes. https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Silkscreen https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Silkscreen

eru 3y ago
The font in the submission isn't meant to be readable in small physical sizes. It's just meant to use as few pixels as possible. A font with a higher resolution, ie more pixels or finer coordinates for a vector based one, has a chance to be more readable at smaller physical sizes. > Not totally sure what I'd use this for. It's mostly just for fun and artistic expression. The linked article mentions the font being used for some album covers.
tzs 3y ago
I used a 3 pixel wide font extensively back on the '80s to write debug messages to Mac screens from code that could not make use of the normal Mac ROM and OS display functions. At first this was when writing SCSI disk drivers for a third party Mac disk maker. Later it was when writing network drivers for a company making a SCSI ethernet interface. Then it was when working on firmware for some NuBUS cards for Mac II. I didn't want to write a full BITBLT, but I didn't want to make width + spacing be 8 pixels because even though that would be very easy it would also mean I could only have 64 characters to a line on the Mac or Mac Plus (512 x 342 display). With characters 3 pixels wide and 1 space between them you just need a simple BITBLT that only has to handle two cases. My font was 3x5. Unlike the other 3x5 fonts people have mentioned I didn't try to include lower case. Here's a sample, scaled up by factor of 4: https://imgur.com/a/I97Zi6l https://imgur.com/a/I97Zi6l The reason that there is a prominent visible symbol for newline is because when the debug print got to the bottom of the screen it would wrap back to the top. The prominent newline let you tell which characters on the line came from the latest print on that line.
shagie 3y ago
I used a font similar to this one when watching log files on an xterm back in the '90s and screen space was valuable. Its not "I want to read the lines as they go past" but rather "I want to get a feel for the rate of the lines as they go past and see the 'shape' of the lines". For an access log, regular use looks very different than someone trying to probe the site and that can be determined by the shape of the line - not the text itself. For that, if you wanted to see what was going on, a quick copy and paste of the text into a regular editor will show you the characters at a reasonable size.
cromulent 3y ago
More about Silkscreen, including that it was created on Windows NT 4.0, which dates it: https://kottke.org/plus/type/silkscreen/ https://kottke.org/plus/type/silkscreen/

Not totally sure what I'd use this for. Silkscreen is bigger, but is a lot more legible at small sizes. https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Silkscreen https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Silkscreen

eru 3y ago

The font in the submission isn't meant to be readable in small physical sizes. It's just meant to use as few pixels as possible. A font with a higher resolution, ie more pixels or finer coordinates for a vector based one, has a chance to be more readable at smaller physical sizes. > Not totally sure what I'd use this for. It's mostly just for fun and artistic expression. The linked article mentions the font being used for some album covers.

tzs 3y ago

I used a 3 pixel wide font extensively back on the '80s to write debug messages to Mac screens from code that could not make use of the normal Mac ROM and OS display functions. At first this was when writing SCSI disk drivers for a third party Mac disk maker. Later it was when writing network drivers for a company making a SCSI ethernet interface. Then it was when working on firmware for some NuBUS cards for Mac II. I didn't want to write a full BITBLT, but I didn't want to make width + spacing be 8 pixels because even though that would be very easy it would also mean I could only have 64 characters to a line on the Mac or Mac Plus (512 x 342 display). With characters 3 pixels wide and 1 space between them you just need a simple BITBLT that only has to handle two cases. My font was 3x5. Unlike the other 3x5 fonts people have mentioned I didn't try to include lower case. Here's a sample, scaled up by factor of 4: https://imgur.com/a/I97Zi6l https://imgur.com/a/I97Zi6l The reason that there is a prominent visible symbol for newline is because when the debug print got to the bottom of the screen it would wrap back to the top. The prominent newline let you tell which characters on the line came from the latest print on that line.

shagie 3y ago

I used a font similar to this one when watching log files on an xterm back in the '90s and screen space was valuable. Its not "I want to read the lines as they go past" but rather "I want to get a feel for the rate of the lines as they go past and see the 'shape' of the lines". For an access log, regular use looks very different than someone trying to probe the site and that can be determined by the shape of the line - not the text itself. For that, if you wanted to see what was going on, a quick copy and paste of the text into a regular editor will show you the characters at a reasonable size.

cromulent 3y ago

More about Silkscreen, including that it was created on Windows NT 4.0, which dates it: https://kottke.org/plus/type/silkscreen/ https://kottke.org/plus/type/silkscreen/