8x8 Font Advent Calendar 2023 Day 4
GEOS64
The GEOS desktop UI from Berkley Systems in 1986 is an incredible feat - achieving what took the Mac a 16-bit processor and over twice the memory.
The 64's resolution required carefully designed typography and "BSW" system fonts were proportionally rendered to great effect.
Included here are bold and non-bold as well as the tiny desktop icon font as a bonus!
If you want a quick play with GEOS on the 64 head to https://commodore.software/downloads/download/690-geos-operating-system/1555-geos-64-1581-floppy-image and download the D81 disk image then fire up VICE and set drive 8 to 1581 and autoboot it.
You'll also need to set the joystick 1 port options to map to something in order to move the mouse.
@damieng great, thank you for sharing!
@cenbe Yes, the sample PDF link on that page is great, so many interesting GEOS fonts although many of them way too big to fit in 8x8s!
@damieng They're not meant to fit in 8x8. They're proportional fonts.
@cenbe Being proportional does not preclude fitting in an 8x8 container...
My advent calendar all fits in 8x8s.
@damieng Yes, but you had to alter the font to do that by adding blank pixels. It's no longer BSW9.
@cenbe it's just the way it is stored. There are routines that print them proportionally despire being stired like this such as https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/24175/ZX-Spectrum/Proportional_Printing
The download also includes FZX files which have no blank columns for use with https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/28171/ZX-Spectrum/FZX
@damieng Hmm, these look like they'd be really handy for 8x8 LED matrix displays. Nice!
@damieng @amigalove Nice idea!! I once made a retro font as well from and old computer called Z1013. It was a machine you had to build up yourself and was produced in the former GDR. https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1296145/z1013