You can get nicer 5x5 fonts amd it was not that uncommon back in the day. 4 wide is not too bad if you make the center of M and W just two pixels inset from top or bottom respectively or borrow the spacing column.
Plenty of systems did it like CP/M on the Spectrum +3 and it looks pretty decent.
rbanffy 4 days ago||
One nice use for these tiny fonts is large text in terminals. Unicode now has 2x4 (from Kaypro), 2x3 (from Teletext, TRS-80), and 2x2 mosaic characters. Unicode also has 3x3 large text (from HP terminals) but font and terminal support is limited.
kevin_thibedeau 4 days ago|
I assume you mean Braille is the 2x4 set. What range introduces 3x3 codepoints?
rbanffy 4 days ago||
The 3x3 are the large text blocks - intended to use in 3x3 groups to form letters and numbers from the fragments in the range. There are 2x4 mosaics as well, separate from the Braille alphabet. These are symbols coming from legacy systems (such as the HP terminals and Kaypro CP/M machines).
shumatsumonobu 4 days ago||
This is gorgeous. 5x5 is a wild constraint — every pixel has to earn its place. The fact that it's still readable at that size says a lot about the craft.
dfox 4 days ago||
IIRC the really cheap Casio Organizers/DataBanks of 90's used 5x5 font. And then my ex used something like that on linux in order to fit a ridiculous amount of xterms onto 14" CRT (somewhat absurd feat with her congenital vision defect).
larsbrinkhoff 4 days ago||
The LINC minicomputer operating system LAP6 came with a 4x5 font, but it didn't have lower case.
biomech 4 days ago|
In the 3 x 2 example, the text is supposed to say “can probably” but I think the glyph for b was used instead, so it reads “you ban probably”.