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ninjaaron

Member

Registered: 2010-12-10

Posts: 296

Made a small, clear bitmap font with extensive Latin charset+Hebrew

GIT repo:
https://github.com/ninjaaron/bitocra

AUR package available from sander17:
http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=52607

Huge thanks to sander17 for getting the AUR package together!

The basic font has ascii+C1 and Latin-1 (aka: iso-8859-1).  The "full" version also has experimental support for Latin Extended-A, which means it should be usable for any modern, Latin-based script.  I'm especially looking for critiques of this charset.  In addition, there is a complete Hebrew charset with niqqud (vowel points), and special Latin characters for use in the transliteration of semitic and Ancient Near Eastern Languages (I personally need that).

It's called "bitocra" because it was partially inspired by the OCR-A font used for the original OCR-readers.

Sample:

More details and discussion in this thread:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1846868

Last edited by ninjaaron (2011-11-09 01:17:48)

ninjaaron

Member

Registered: 2010-12-10

Posts: 296

Re: Made a small, clear bitmap font with extensive Latin charset+Hebrew

Due to all of the excitement this thread has generated (HA!) there is now a GIT repo and an AUR package.  Details in the OP.

Franek

Member

Registered: 2010-05-16

Posts: 100

Re: Made a small, clear bitmap font with extensive Latin charset+Hebrew

This font is great! I use it as a secondary programming font in Gvim: normally coding in Inconsolata (size 18) and switching to Bitocra when I need an overview over a large portion of code. However Bitocra is so easily readable that I find myself forgetting to switch back to Inconsolata more and more often.

Criticism:
- The capital A looks odd and is not easily recognisable for me. Maybe the bar should be higher?
- Some quotation marks are not in the font yet and thus displayed as whitespace, which is confusing. I am particularly missing U+201C (“). (U+201E („) is already included, great!)

Last edited by Franek (2011-11-11 11:59:41)

ninjaaron

Member

Registered: 2010-12-10

Posts: 296

Re: Made a small, clear bitmap font with extensive Latin charset+Hebrew

This font is great! I use it as a secondary programming font in Gvim: normally coding in Inconsolata (size 18) and switching to Bitocra when I need an overview over a large portion of code. However Bitocra is easily readable that I find myself forgetting to switch back to Inconsolata more and more often.

Criticism:
- The capital A looks odd and is not easily recognisable for me. Maybe the bar should be higher?
- Some quotation marks are not in the font yet and thus displayed as whitespace, which is confusing. I am particularly missing U+201C (“). (U+201E („) is already included, great!)

I never made U+201E, so it must be substituting from another font.

However, I have made both of these characters now (if you find them to be unsatisfactory, let me know and I will  see what I can do).  If you need any other characters, let me know.  The "A" will probably remain as it is.  I've tried quite a few different shapes with the letter, and this is the only one that I really felt fit with the overall style of the font.  Sorry!

I've also made the font slightly more condensed (the screenshot in the OP has been changed to reflect this).  I've gotten very positive reactions to this change on the crunchbang forums.  It's almost ready to be pushed to 1.0, which will probably happen tomorrow.  Depending on when you last updated bitocra, there may be other changes as well, but it should be pretty stable from here on out.

If you want to test the new characters, and you read this before the changes go up tomorrow, here's what it's going to be.

There is also another bitmap font with the same metrics as bitocra modeled after the Ubuntu font family that I will be releasing very soon.  If anyone finds this post, here's a preview.

Franek

Member

Registered: 2010-05-16

Posts: 100

Re: Made a small, clear bitmap font with extensive Latin charset+Hebrew

- Some quotation marks are not in the font yet and thus displayed as whitespace, which is confusing. I am particularly missing U+201C (“). (U+201E („) is already included, great!)

I never made U+201E, so it must be substituting from another font.

However, I have made both of these characters now (if you find them to be unsatisfactory, let me know and I will  see what I can do).

Thanks! However, I think the U+201E is supposed to be bent 9-like, the U+201C 6-like. (These are for quotations in german; you might want to add U201D (”) for english as well, although I personally do not need it.)

ninjaaron

Member

Registered: 2010-12-10

Posts: 296

Re: Made a small, clear bitmap font with extensive Latin charset+Hebrew

I love German feedback.  Always attentive to detail.

I've done what you said, and the changes are now pushed to my github repo.  I'm emailing sander17 now, so the changes should go into the AUR soon.

Franek

Member

Registered: 2010-05-16

Posts: 100

Re: Made a small, clear bitmap font with extensive Latin charset+Hebrew

Oh well, did I confirm that cliché again… Anyway, thanks for the quotation marks, pleased to have them!

ninjaaron

Member

Registered: 2010-12-10

Posts: 296

Re: Made a small, clear bitmap font with extensive Latin charset+Hebrew

Oh well, did I confirm that cliché again… Anyway, thanks for the quotation marks, pleased to have them!

I don't mean it as a bad thing.  I lived in Germany for a little while (and Denmark for two years, which as some similarity to Germany in this regard, though it's a bit different), and of course I know plenty of Germans who are not attentive to detail.  Still, there is a kind of cultural value on precision that you don't find in many places outside of northern Europe.  I love it.  I think the little things are very important, and I hope to perpetuate a similar kind of value in my home when I start a family (though I still need to figure out how to do that without making kids feel like crap for not being perfect).  Anyway, I don't love everything about German culture, but I love that, and you can definitely take it as a complement (though I realize Germans have trouble being proud of themselves since... well, you know).

Last edited by ninjaaron (2011-11-11 17:26:46)

Franek

Member

Registered: 2010-05-16

Posts: 100

Re: Made a small, clear bitmap font with extensive Latin charset+Hebrew

Oh well, did I confirm that cliché again… Anyway, thanks for the quotation marks, pleased to have them!

I don't mean it as a bad thing.

Don't worry, I did not read it that way.