Calling all typographers

Hi Guys DEC did some interesting things when it came to fonts on front panels. Take an 8/e front panel for example. the address is kind of a chalet font. But they built it out of circles and straight lines and that's what I do. Then they bunch up the characters until they touc

Re: Calling all typographers

On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:19:43 +0100, Rod Smallwood wrote > But they built it out of circles and straight lines and that's what I do. That's superficially, but not exactly, true. Even the 'o' is not a perfect circle, and you can't get close to replicating the 's' or the digits that way. I took a s

Re: Calling all typographers

> On Apr 28, 2016, at 10:37 AM, schoe...@kw.igs.net wrote: > > On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:19:43 +0100, Rod Smallwood wrote >> But they built it out of circles and straight lines and that's what I do. > > That's superficially, but not exactly, true. Even the 'o' is not a perfect > circle, and you ca

Re: Calling all typographers

On 04/28/2016 07:19 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: I'd like to recover the DEC fonts and have looked at several font creator/editors. Frankly they are dung. Every fancy curve there is but not a straight forward line and circle method of creating lower case characters as DEC did it. I do need

Re: Calling all typographers

On 28/04/2016 16:07, Paul Koning wrote: On Apr 28, 2016, at 10:37 AM, schoe...@kw.igs.net wrote: On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:19:43 +0100, Rod Smallwood wrote But they built it out of circles and straight lines and that's what I do. That's superficially, but not exactly, true. Even the 'o' is not

Re: Calling all typographers

On 28/04/2016 16:32, Jon Elson wrote: On 04/28/2016 07:19 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: I'd like to recover the DEC fonts and have looked at several font creator/editors. Frankly they are dung. Every fancy curve there is but not a straight forward line and circle method of creating lower cas

Re: Calling all typographers

On Thu, 4/28/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: > Every fancy curve there is but not a straight > forward line and circle method of  creating lower case > characters I'm not sure if you count it as straightforward, but I'd suggest METAFONT. Straight lines are certainly straightforward. Circles are a lit

Re: Calling all typographers

On 28/04/2016 16:42, Brian L. Stuart wrote: On Thu, 4/28/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: Every fancy curve there is but not a straight forward line and circle method of creating lower case characters I'm not sure if you count it as straightforward, but I'd suggest METAFONT. Straight lines are ce

Re: Calling all typographers

On Thu, 4/28/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: > On 28/04/2016 16:32, Jon Elson wrote: >> Have you tried MetaFont?  I've never actually created a font with it, >> just used it automatically within the TeX environment.  But, there is >> a human-readable language that defines the characters. > > I haven't

Re: Calling all typographers

> On Apr 28, 2016, at 11:42 AM, Brian L. Stuart wrote: > > On Thu, 4/28/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: > >> Every fancy curve there is but not a straight >> forward line and circle method of creating lower case >> characters > > I'm not sure if you count it as straightforward, but I'd > suggest M

Re: Calling all typographers

> On Apr 28, 2016, at 8:19 AM, Rod Smallwood > wrote: > > ... > I'd like to recover the DEC fonts and have looked at several font > creator/editors. > > Frankly they are dung. Every fancy curve there is but not a straight forward > line and circle method of creating lower case characters >

Re: Calling all typographers

On 04/28/2016 10:46 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: On 28/04/2016 16:32, Jon Elson wrote: Have you tried MetaFont? I've never actually created a font with it, just used it automatically within the TeX environment. But, there is a human-readable language that defines the characters. Jon I haven

Re: Calling all typographers

On 04/28/2016 11:05 AM, Paul Koning wrote: On Apr 28, 2016, at 11:42 AM, Brian L. Stuart wrote: On Thu, 4/28/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: Every fancy curve there is but not a straight forward line and circle method of creating lower case characters I'm not sure if you count it as straightforwa

Re: Calling all typographers

On 28/04/2016 17:18, Paul Koning wrote: On Apr 28, 2016, at 8:19 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: ... I'd like to recover the DEC fonts and have looked at several font creator/editors. Frankly they are dung. Every fancy curve there is but not a straight forward line and circle method of creatin

Re: Calling all typographers

On 2016-04-28 1:43 PM, Rod Smallwood wrote: On 28/04/2016 17:18, Paul Koning wrote: On Apr 28, 2016, at 8:19 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: ... I'd like to recover the DEC fonts and have looked at several font creator/editors. ... paul Oh I tried that one. Very powerful I'm sure but I cou

Re: Calling all typographers

On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 18:43:30 +0100, Rod Smallwood wrote > On 28/04/2016 17:18, Paul Koning wrote: > > I just found FontForge, which is open source. A few minutes > > experimentation shows that it is quite happy to draw straight lines, including doing obvious stuff like line segments forced to b

Re: Calling all typographers

On 28 April 2016 at 13:05, Jon Elson wrote: > That should be available for most Linux distros. You should also be able to > get it on Windows, but might be a bit harder to find. > I believe the current easiest to get up and running TeX/LaTeX solution for Windows is MikTeX. I

RE: Calling all typographers

-Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Christian Gauger-Cosgrove Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2016 10:07 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Calling all typographers On 28 April 2016 at 13:05, Jon Elson wrote

Re: Calling all typographers

On 29 April 2016 at 02:11, Paul Birkel wrote: > http://miktex.org/pkg/az > > Wow, is that some list. In my era it was a *lot* shorter, by orders of > magnitude. The list does include these: > > miktex-metafont-baseMETAFONT base > miktex-metafont-bin-2.9 METAFFONT binaries >

Re: Calling all typographers

schoe...@kw.igs.net wrote > On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:19:43 +0100, Rod Smallwood wrote >> But they built it out of circles and straight lines and that's what I do. > > That's superficially, but not exactly, true. Even the 'o' is not a perfect > circle, and you can't get close to replicating the 's' or

Re: Calling all typographers

On 29/04/2016 13:39, ste...@malikoff.com wrote: schoe...@kw.igs.net wrote On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:19:43 +0100, Rod Smallwood wrote But they built it out of circles and straight lines and that's what I do. That's superficially, but not exactly, true. Even the 'o' is not a perfect circle, and y

Re: Calling all typographers

> On Apr 29, 2016, at 8:39 AM, ste...@malikoff.com wrote: > >> ... > I've also had a go at the dec font for the purpose of those 'good enough' > mastheads I > posted about here last year: > http://www.vcfed.org/forum/entry.php?544-A-good-enough-replica-of-the-digital-PDP11-masthead-for-the-H960-

Re: Calling all typographers

On 29/04/2016 16:39, Paul Koning wrote: On Apr 29, 2016, at 8:39 AM, ste...@malikoff.com wrote: ... I've also had a go at the dec font for the purpose of those 'good enough' mastheads I posted about here last year: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/entry.php?544-A-good-enough-replica-of-the-digita

Re: Calling all typographers

> On Apr 29, 2016, at 12:07 PM, Rod Smallwood > wrote: > > ... > If anybody has found or made or knows a download URL of any dec font it > would help me of I could get hold of it. My version of the DEC font that's on those bezels and on older handbook covers can be found here: http://www.d

Re: Calling all typographers

Paul wrote: >> On Apr 29, 2016, at 8:39 AM, ste...@malikoff.com wrote: >> >>> ... >> I've also had a go at the dec font for the purpose of those 'good enough' >> mastheads I >> posted about here last year: >> http://www.vcfed.org/forum/entry.php?544-A-good-enough-replica-of-the-digital-PDP11-mast

Re: Calling all typographers

On 29/04/2016 17:18, Paul Koning wrote: On Apr 29, 2016, at 12:07 PM, Rod Smallwood wrote: ... If anybody has found or made or knows a download URL of any dec font it would help me of I could get hold of it. My version of the DEC font that's on those bezels and on older handbook covers

Re: Calling all typographers

At 10:39 ?pm +1000 2016/04/29, ste...@malikoff.com wrote: >I'm puzzled about the notion >of 'o' not being a perfect circle as I found it to be quite so, at least >on the masthead. When I did this originally I worked from document scans from Bitsavers, and became convinced from those that the bowls

Re: Calling all typographers

I think you have to look at things in the context of the time. There was little or no CAD and books were done with photo typesetters (very expensive) Each page was a kind of photograph called a bromide Non standard things like logos where also stored on a bromide. Quite often if you wanted t

RE: Calling all typographers and introduction.

I've been lurking on the cctech list for awhile and thought I would introduce myself. I hope I'm not breaking protocol by responding to the " Calling all typographers" topic I am truly amazed by the breadth of knowledge of the Classic Computers Community. I'm a com

Digital logo artwork - was Re: Calling all typographers

On 2016-04-29 11:39 AM, Paul Koning wrote: ... Fortunately, a correct version, in PostScript form, has been posted long ago by someone Do you have a link for posterity? --Toby paul

Re: Digital logo artwork - was Re: Calling all typographers

On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 11:22 AM, Toby Thain wrote: > On 2016-04-29 11:39 AM, Paul Koning wrote: > >> ... Fortunately, a correct >> > version, in PostScript form, has been posted long ago by someone > > Do you have a link for posterity? > I think this is the one: http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/20

Re: Digital logo artwork - was Re: Calling all typographers

> On Apr 29, 2016, at 12:37 PM, Kyle Owen wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 11:22 AM, Toby Thain > wrote: > >> On 2016-04-29 11:39 AM, Paul Koning wrote: >> >>> ... Fortunately, a correct >>> >> version, in PostScript form, has been posted long ago by someone >> >> Do you have a link for p