Looking for proportional bitmap fonts

Franek · 2014-07-21 14:19:40

I would like to try using bitmap fonts as default for the GUIs on my system, just as an experiment. However, while there is an abundance of good monospace bitmap fonts (console/programming fonts mostly), I find it really hard to find any nice proportional ones. Why proportional? Because they tend to use horizontal space more efficiently (relevant e. g. for browser tabs), and because I find them more pleasant to read for continous text—code is another matter, of course.

So here are the properties I am looking for in such a font:
– bitmap/pixel font
– readable (serif and sans-serif is okay, but no whimsical old game font)
– not to small, as I want to use it on a modern screen (around 16 pixels is probably best)
– if possible, decent unicode support (mostly, but not only, for typographical quotation marks and dashes and "öäüß")

What I have found so far:
– The bitmap fonts on http://pixelfonts.style-force.net/ look quite nice, even though they are only 8 pixels in height. Unfortunately they don't include a lot of unicode characters. (And the bitmap versions are in .fon format, which would have to be converted to .pcf for use with X, if I am not mistaken.)
– There is a long list of bitmap fonts on http://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php. I have skimmed most of that list and haven't found any font meeting my criteria yet.
– GNU Unifont is a monospace font, but still the closest to what I am looking for so far. If this thread leads to nothing, I will probably try using Unifont for everything.
– The fonts of the original Macintosh look promising, especially Geneva and New York. Does anyone know a place to get the old bitmap versions of these fonts? (Although their unicode support probably isn't great.)

Trilby · 2014-07-21 14:28:52

What about the xorg-fonts-* packages?

Ari'osika · 2014-07-21 15:10:44

What about Gohufont? or ProFont?

Franek · 2014-07-21 21:08:36

Thanks, Trilby, how could I miss the xorg-fonts-* packages! On the first glance, none of those wins my heart, but they might grow on me.

Ari'osika, Gohufont and Profont are monospace fonts. I am looking for proportional fonts.

Ari'osika · 2014-07-21 21:49:46

Indeed they are.

Unfortunately as you said, it's slim pickin's when it comes to proportional bitmap fonts.

I have a few other suggestions but they're all TrueType fonts (but at least they're proportional, lol).

Franek · 2014-07-22 09:50:12

The Helvetica from xorg-fonts-100dpi looks very promising. Unfortunately, it (or bitmap fonts in general) doesn't seem to play well with Gtk2:

– Gtk2 programs can only display it in pixelsize 11 (larger sizes can be selected, but are displayed as 11), while various sizes are visible from within xfontsel. (Curiously, the font is called "hlv" in Gtk programs, e. g. gtk2fontsel, but "Helvetica" in xfontsel, while "Helvetica" is an alias for Arial otherwise.)
(Edit: This was me being stupid. The excellent hlv is one of the Mplus bitmap fonts and, while similar, not at all identical to the Xorg Helvetica.)

– Once hlv is set in ~/.gtkrc-2.0, several Gtk programs crash with:

cairo-scaled-font.c:459: _cairo_scaled_glyph_page_destroy: Assertion `!scaled_font->cache_frozen' failed.

According to this thread, this might be an unresolved bug in cairo. See also this Ubuntu forums thread.

Edit: Cairo bug report.

Last edited by Franek (2014-07-22 20:55:08)

Franek · 2014-07-23 12:03:43

(Please ignore, posted in wrong thread. Sorry.)

Last edited by Franek (2014-07-23 12:05:01)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-07-21 14:19:40

Looking for proportional bitmap fonts

#2 2014-07-21 14:28:52

Re: Looking for proportional bitmap fonts

#3 2014-07-21 15:10:44

Re: Looking for proportional bitmap fonts

#4 2014-07-21 21:08:36

Re: Looking for proportional bitmap fonts

#5 2014-07-21 21:49:46

Re: Looking for proportional bitmap fonts

#6 2014-07-22 09:50:12

Re: Looking for proportional bitmap fonts

#7 2014-07-23 12:03:43

Re: Looking for proportional bitmap fonts

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