Talk:Computer font

Dates
Hi - one thing that was useful about Bank_Gothic and not about Andalé_Mono that the former article contains the year it was created. Folks who study or practice graphic design and its history would find this really useful, especially if there was an index page of fonts and type by year. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.98.198.151 (talk) 23:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Separate article
On the typeface talk page, several people complained about how computer font should be a separate article. Now it is. Edit it and make it better. --Jpkotta 08:34, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Should include information on the processes and software involved in producing installable fonts from vector images.

Incomplete

 * I'm no font expert, but I was surprised that this article had no reference to OpenType or Apple Advanced Typography. Mpntod 13:11, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Last November I started a parent article about the new font systems you mentioned above: Smartfont. Unfortunately I do not have enough knowledge to write about differences and similarities of these systems. I am sure there is enough content for both articles, don't you think?--Hhielscher 05:06, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

How Do I?
How do I get a font from the internet? I've downloaded the font, unzipped it, but I can't get it on Word 2003. How do I do this? 206.81.151.68 23:58, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Different Types of Fonts in use
Could this article give an overview about the different computer font formats please? Like .pfb, .pfm, .afm, .inf, .ofm, .ttf, .otf, .pk, .sfs, .xbm, .abf, .bdf, .fli and whatever. Would it make sense to split the many font formats in deprecated and in use? About the current ones I would like to read about the different use cases and advantages/disadvantages of each. Anyone with font knowledge out there?--Hhielscher 04:59, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

So what does 12 point font mean?
I was suprised to find that nowhere in this article did information about what 12 point or 24 point (etc) font actually mean. Is every font level representive of the amount of pixels in each word?--Frozenport 22:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Point size is a typesetting term. Oicumayberight 23:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merger of outline font and bitmap font articles
Outline and bitmap fonts cannot really be discussed properly without referring to each other for comparisons, so it makes little sense to have two articles for them - particularly when this article is already here and is better written. Neither of them have much information and most of it already appears here anyway, so the best course seems to be to merge them both into here. Asuffield 18:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge: I agree with points above. Oicumayberight 19:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I have merged the articles per the request.-Andrew c 21:53, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Missing history
This article badly needs some history.

When was the first computer font created? Did it have a precursor in, say, punch-cards for weaving machinery? Were fonts first hard-wired into operating systems, and later generalized into portable or loadable font files? When were bitmap and outline fonts invented? Were they first used for printing, or video display, or both? When were the first fonts ported from typefaces for print typography? When were anti-aliased and sub-pixel rendering systems implemented? What's coming next?

Thanks. —Michael Z. 2007-06-13 01:26 Z 

I added a history section, but I've never done anything on Wikipedia before and I'm not sure abour the links. TomMicrocosm (talk) 01:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid the recently added history section has been removed as a copyright violation. Unless permission is granted for it from the original author, it will have to be completely rewritten before it is added back to the page. VernoWhitney (talk) 23:57, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Poor search
I was very surprised when I searched "mono-spaced font" and "mono spaced font" I did not find this page nor the monospaced paged. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

Fixed (I hope!) ~The Little Green Man from Mars(My Page)(Where do I live?) 21:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Dingbats
There is no mention of dingbat fonts here! They are incredibly important fonts that allow us to spice up reports with goofy pictures and icons! Something ought to be done - it's just I'm not sure how to go about it. ~The Little Green Man from Mars(My Page)(Where do I live?) 19:31, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


 * This article is not about typefaces. It's about font technology. Oicumayberight 19:41, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


 * This article is about computer fonts, like it says in the title. Should it not have, at the very least, at the top "If you were looking for information about types of typefaces, go to x"? ~The Little Green Man from Mars(My Page)(Where do I live?) 23:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Done! ;) Oicumayberight 02:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Hershey Fonts
There is currently no mention in this article (or all of Wikipedia, as far as I can tell) of the Hershey fonts. Created in the 1960s by the National Bureau of Standards, they're certainly one of the earliest vector font packages ever created. They should probably be worked in somewhere.
 * http://emergent.unpythonic.net/software/hershey
 * http://www.umanitoba.ca/afs/plant_science/psgendb/doc/Phylip/draw.html (scroll down to bottom)

Clayhalliwell (talk) 18:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Scaling a bitmap image does not lead to distortion
How do you call the problem of scaling a bitmap image? For sure, it's not about distortion. ("A bitmap image can be displayed in a different size only with some distortion...") 84.173.183.6 (talk) 15:17, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I think distortion is a reasonable term here, at least in a simple article. First, remember that we're talking 1980s and early 90s here, and the type of scaling done by the operating system, and that the common bitmap fonts were black & white, not greyscale. Remember also that the mechanisms used to scale them did not involve fancy schemes of interpolation. As a result, they tended to get very blocky at large sizes, and irregular at any size other than the size that they were designed for. Thomas Phinney (talk) 23:15, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Merge discussion for Screenfont
Articles seem to discuss precisely the same thing. While the article for Screenfont is a good start, it seems to merely supplement this article. Critterbane (talk) 00:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Support&mdash;As screenfont is an obvious subset of the computer font subject, a merge would be logical.&mdash;RJH (talk) 19:57, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Possible plagiarism
A ton of the content comes from http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/85.667294 apparently, i found it through http://www.google.com.gt/search?q=%22Unfortunately%2C+I+have+been+unable+to+identify+exactly+who+were+the+originators+of+most+of+the+technologies+that+have+emerged+as+important+in+computer+fonts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tian2992 (talk • contribs) 05:38, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The Issue of Font LEGIBILITY
There is no mention (that I have found) of the issue of the relative legibility of the various computer bit-map fonts. So many allow but one pixel between elements of the same or adjacent characters -- such as in the instances of double "l" or double "i". Consider, for example the word "will" : Typically, half the length is taken by the single character "w", with the THREE remaining characters "ill" crowded into the second half of the overall length : This is NONSENSE and VERY hard to read when one's eyes are no longer young ! ! !

There is a need for Computer Font Reform ! !

Bitmap vs Raster terminology
An anonymous user changed the heading and most of the wording in the section on bitmap fonts to "raster fonts." I reverted it. It is quite possible that "raster" is a more accurate term, but "bitmap fonts" is the general term in common usage in the computer industry, and specifically within the font industry as well. If somebody wants to make the sweeping change, let's discuss the rationale. Thomas Phinney (talk) 02:24, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

== spam the link at the bottom regarding microsoft fonts goes to apage selling wedding gowns ==

No References and Missing Sections
I am starting to notice that there are no references to any reliable sources on the article. Could an admin please put the Needs Reliable sources template on the article please? Also, normally there is a "History" section, where the section talks about the history of the topic. There isn't one. Helixsoft (talk) 20:40, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Roman, Emboldened, Italic, and Oblique
There is no mention in the article of how these variant forms (Roman, Emboldened, Italic, and Oblique) are represented in a font. This appears to be an omission? Or is this information elsewhere? FreeFlow99 (talk) 15:33, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Font
What is a font 2409:40E5:93:D698:70C2:F5FF:FE12:B578 (talk) 07:13, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * See font. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:21, 5 April 2024 (UTC)