Fonts

[Ralph Shumaker]

SJS wrote:
> begin  quoting Ralph Shumaker as of Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 01:29:35PM -0800:
>> Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
>>> Ralph Shumaker wrote:
>>>> I never understood why spaces and tabs cannot be displayed with 
>>>> something visible.
>>> Because a tab is not a printing character, it is a *control* 
>>> character, and its semantics are poorly defined.
>>>
>>> Tab is *not* just n spaces.  It is "move the head/platen to tab stop" 
>>> and "tab stop" is defined by the end user.
>> Be that as it may, that still doesn't address ASCII 032 not having the 
>> option of being visible so as to visually be able to differentiate it 
>> from a tab, on screen that is.
>
> I've used editors where tabs and spaces were visible.
>
> It got kind of annoying after awhile.
>
> Although, come to think of it, I didn't try using those editors for
> looking at IAS code. Hm.
>
>>                                 On the printouts, I would prefer things 
>> be as they are, except maybe being able to tell the printer to use the 
>> computer's definition of the tab.  I think someone mentioned that the 
>> printer *always* uses 8.
>
> That was probably me. And it's a default -- some of the old dot-matrix
> printers, at least, had the ability to "set tabstops", IIRC.

I *thought* I remembered my printer having that feature in the 
documentation (tho I never used it), my Star NX-1000 (IIRC), my first 
color printer for my Amiga 500.

>
> [snip]
>> I'm not so sure I necessarily want "A font for programming must be 
>> monospaced", but the rest of the description sounds great!  I like 
>> monospace in email (especially when doing or viewing ASCII art).  I like 
>> monospace on the command line, vim, but probably not in Firefox.
>
> Heh. If it's not printed, I prefer monospaced.
>
>> I'll check it out.
>>
>> But I distinctly remember on my Amiga computer being able to modify 
>> fonts myself.  And a quick search for "linux font editor" thru Viv?simo, 
>> the first page of 20 results netted 9 pages of interest.
>
> I made a few fonts with the Amiga Font Editor. It was fun, and you soon
> realize that making *good* fonts is not an easy task.
>
> Amiga Fonts could also be in color, which made it possible to do a slick
> version of Rogue... not until the tile-based nethacks came out did I
> ever see anything similiar on another platform.

Funny you should mention nethack.  Just hours ago, when searching 
Vivísimo for "linux font editor", among the hits was a linux console 
text editor that was ported from DOS (previously from Atari (previously 
from something I never heard of and don't remember)) to linux just so 
that he could edit the linux console font so that he could change the 
"@" to look like a person, the whatever-that-character-was to look like 
a dog, and so forth.  It was actually quite good.  He remarked that the 
tiles version didn't allow you to see more than one room at a time 
whereas you could see the whole field and everything in it with his 
version.  I'd give the link, but I closed it hours ago.

>
>> But I don't see why any of the other fonts I mentioned should be 
>> untouchable.  It would be nice to have all fonts on my system show a dot 
>> or a slash in the zero.  It would be nice them all have a very short 
>> horizontal half roof on the left side of a vertical line for the lower 
>> case L (whether it has a base or not, I don't care).  It would be nice 
>> for all fonts on my system to have a down sloping half roof on the left 
>> side of a vertical line with a full base for the number one.  It would 
>> be nice for them all to have a vertical line with the top half replaced 
>> by a small but visible dot for a lower case I and an upper case I that 
>> looks like the cross section of an I-beam.
>
> You mean you want something like:
>
>   xxx            xx
>    xx           xxx
>    xx            xx
>    xx    and     xx
>    xx            xx
>    xx            xx
>    xx          xxxxxx
>
> ?

Yup.  And:

  xxxxxx
    xx            xx
    xx
    xx     and    xx
    xx            xx
    xx            xx
  xxxxxx          xx

and:

   xxxxx          xxxxx
  xx   xx        xx   xx
  xx  xxx        xx   xx
  xx x xx   OR   xx x xx
  xxx  xx        xx   xx
  xx   xx        xx   xx
   xxxxx          xxxxx

or something thereabout.

The zero should always be distinctive from the oh, and not just in 
girth.  Distinction by girth is so stupid.  It's easy to know which one 
is which when they are next to one another, but when they are not, and 
context doesn't help you, good luck!

>
>> But just as nice, I would like to have fonts that have a space (ASCII 
>> 032) that shows something visible on the screen but is invisible in a 
>> printout.  Even if tabs don't show anything visible, at least something 
>> visible for ASCII 032 would visually distinguish it from the tab.
>
> Changing the font on your system would do that, I would think.

Except possibly in printouts that are postscript rendered using my 
system fonts, the same ones that have a space that is somehow visible on 
the screen.



-- 
Ralph

--------------------
I'm willing to pay real money ... or US currency, whichever you prefer.
--Lan Barnes