Anders,

Forget conventions, the 4 is great where it is.

Like Hrant, I love the wide set. I think it's marketable.
The condensed font is really tough to read unless
the user doubled the size.

I like the small caps. I am a sucker for small caps.

Stephen

Anders, your thoughts on old-style numerals are exactly the type of thing many more designers should be going through. Instead, most people are too afraid/lazy/dumb to challenge convention, and we're stuck with the non-sensical stuff we keep seeing.

One could argue that keeping the old convention in numeral design is important because readers are already used to it. But really, do we expect readers to notice and even react adversely to something as subtle as making the "2" ascending, for example? On the contrary, I think the functional and aesthetic advantages of improved design could play positive roles in the reader's subconscious.

Part of the problem is if/when you try to license your work to a font house, they enforce their own beliefs/needs on the design. This is understandable, and much can be learned from the experience of font houses, but to me it's one more reason to go completely independent.

Conventional numerals suffer from two main things:

1. The distribution of contrast (stroke thickness) is erratic and inconsistent. Gill tried to address this, but I for one don't like the results. In November I will post my own efforts to this list, and see what you guys think.

2. The "extenderness" of some numerals does not seem to be based on solid reasoning, at least not solid in this day and age. As you allude to, the numerals are too descending overall.

In the case of #1, I think more people should be trying to either: make the emphasis of *all* the numerals horizontal; or (preferably) align the emphasis of all the numerals to the vertical of the alphabetic glyphs.

In the case of #2, I personally think the "3" and "5" work much better when sitting on the baseline*, and the "2" should ascend as well. As for the zero, I'm undecided. :-/

* Note that some old French foundries used to so this.

Also, the conventional numeral "4" is a disaster.

BTW, concerning your statement that "this is not a completely new invention": Maybe your efforts are not an "invention" (very very few things really are), but the mental path you're taking is significant because it's both important and disregarded.

hhp

Hrant, I think you nail the problems with old style figures very well and I look forward to see your achievements on November 1st. But I like the descending

Thanks, David. The condensed middle-size 7 is just a mistake. I notice now some other flaws. I guess I didn

OK, in case anybody's interested, I posted some
"NEWmerals" in a thread under Critique/Numerals.

hhp

Hummmm...Miguel, I'm not so sure about that...of course many bitmap fonts look similar to others...for instance your font Detroit 45 looks very similar to the font that http://www.pixelhaus.com



uses, and I know that that font has been around for many many years. I can't recall off the top of my head what the name of it is though. Just be careful before alluding to other copying your work...

the last 3 lines of the disodium sample are identical to the last 3 lines of the slightest sample. i can see how 2 people could make the same bitmap font, but its weird how the way these 2 samples are displayed are the exact same. if you layer one over the other, you'll see.

ok nevermind my earlier post, i misunderstood Miguel's posting. but i would agree with the others- theres probably a hundred bitmap fonts with as many similarities as the two you're comparing.

Miguel,

no harm done. I don

wow -- this would be absolutely fantastic in an xterm.

CorelDRAW! allows you to create Truetype fonts... I've created a couple bitmap fonts using that.