Zugg Software :: View topic

Wanderer Joined: 03 Aug 2005 Posts: 84

Personally I like Anonemous better. I found it at the same place the first guy suggested and am now using it. It's a little weird when you are used to courier, but I like it.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Yeah I can't say I like the bitstream font, it's kinda squishy and tall. That's my first impression anyway, I will give it a go for a couple of days and see if it grows on me.

I don't really like the double quotes, the dashes, or the pipes. Plus it's all a little squashed in, prefer square(er) letters.

As a second thought, someone posted something about a medievia font having some cool icons and stuff for mudding, perhaps CMUD should have something more along those lines as a standard font so you can use the extended character set to draw ascii-art a bit better?

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:30 am

No, I'm worried that using something like a Medievia font would cause lots of problems on non-English MUDs, and there are lots of those. I'm not talking about Unicode stuff like Chinese, but MUDs that use German, Italian, etc which need the standard Windows font set. Some MUDs used to use the VT100 line drawing characters, but since those characters weren't available in the default Windows character set, few MUDs use them anymore I think.

Also, if CMUD had a non-standard font, I'm not sure MUDs would even use it since it would mess up on other clients. The Medievia font is also a bitmap font, so it doesn't scale.

I'll take a look at anonymous also and see if I like it better than the Vera font. But I think this is all going to be one of those "individual preference" things. The advantage of shipping a default font like Vera is that it would give CMUD a different default look for the first-time user that might help improve the first impressions (since Courier, I'm sure we can all agree, is pretty bad). Since the font is easily changeable, people can always select something different.

Rainchild, if you try the 9 pt version of Vera, it's a bit more "square" compared to the 10 pt version. At least that's what it looks like to me. I actually like the 9pt better than the 10pt.

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:45 am

Anonymous isn't too bad, but there are a couple of problems:

1) For some reason, it completely messes up in Delphi with the Delphi syntax highlighting. Some setting in the font file that is needed for Windows clearly isn't set correctly. I don't know what size metric Delphi is using though.

2) In CMUD, there is too much vertical white-space between lines. It requires using the Vertical Adjust option to make it look decent, and I don't really want to use that as a default. Maybe this is related to the size metric issue that Delphi has trouble with.

3) While it's a free font, it does require permission to distribute it with other software such as CMUD, and I'd be required to include the PDF file that comes with it.

4) As mentioned in the PDF file, it's larger than normal Windows fonts. So I find myself using the 8pt, which is the smallest it comes with and still wishing for something even smaller.

Too bad it doesn't work properly with Delphi since I probably like it better as a programming font.

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:42 pm

Personally I like Courier. It's clean and eas to read... but I must admit I've not tried too many alternatives.

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 4:42 pm

I like the new Consolas from Microsoft. Unfortunately, you have to have a license of Visual Studio 2005. However, I think you can get away with having Visual Studio Express, which is free.

Here's the page for Consolas:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=22e69ae4-7e40-4807-8a86-b3d36fab68d3&displaylang=en

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:17 pm

Tech, Courier has a major issue/problem: it doesn't distinguish between 0 (zero) and O (capital Oh), and between 1 (one) and l (lowercase L). While this isn't a killer issue for MUDing, it's an issue when programming, and effects people creating scripts in zMUD/CMUD. So it's something I've always wanted to change if I could find a good alternative.

Also, of course, Courier is a bitmap font and doesn't scale to other pt sizes very well. Courier New was the Microsoft TrueType attempt, but it's one of those fonts that has *way* too much vertical white-space between lines. In fact, I originally added the Vertical Adjust option specifically to make Courier New useable. Of course, Courier New also has the same issues with 0/O and 1/l.

One thing I like about the Bitstream Vera font is that the zero has a dot in the middle instead of a slash through it. I've always thought the slashed zeros looked bad, even though it's a worldwide standard in the math/science fields. The dotted zeros just seem nicer to me. But it's another personal preference thing.

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:19 pm

bortaS: right, so that sort of defeats the whole purpose doesn't it? I obviously can't distribute that font with CMUD. Remember, that's what I'm looking for: a better font for CMUD, not just for MUD output, but for the script editor also.

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 12:04 am

My eye's aren't that good.. so I must be that anal... I usually work with courier at 9 or 10pt and I can't recall ever having an issue distinguishing the two. C'est la vie. I download bitstream so I'll give it a go.

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2006 4:28 pm

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Yeah, I've gone back to using "Courier New" now too hehe. I never had an issue with 0 O and o... or 1 and I and l. There's enough of a pixel difference for me to see the differences.

Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:29 pm

bortaS is correct, the new Consolas font is quite nice. I look forward to Microsoft removing the installation restrictions so that more people can use this font.

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:23 am

Yeah.. I've started researching it... It's really nice. I'll have to see if I can get it.

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 4:47 am

After a bit more research, I came across this... http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000356.html Since I'm still on CRT I guess I'll be without it for a while.

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 12:03 am

I don't think anyone has mentioned Proggy Fonts yet available at http://www.proggyfonts.com/ which states they are free. Since it was all started by wanting a nice small font it is well worth checking out Proggy Tiny http://www.proggyfonts.com/download/screenshot_proggy_tiny.gif I think I may well switch to it.

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:10 am

If you download and install VS Express you can then install the Consolas font. I'm trying it on the laptop.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

I never had issues with Consolas on my old CRT, but that's neither here nor there now that I have http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/2407wfp_au?c=au&l=en&s=dhs :D

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 9:05 am

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 9:05 am

The "Terminal" Fonts in Windows are not missing.

Windows includes some very basic bitmap fonts (called "raster" fonts in Windows NT/2000/XP) that it uses in "DOS boxes" and Terminal modes (when run in "Window" mode rather than "Full-screen").
These monospaced Terminal fonts are provided by files installed in the Windows Font directory. The most important of these are:-

VGAOEM.FON - when the Screen Display setting is "Small Fonts", and
8514OEM.FON - when the Screen Display setting is "Large Fonts".

See http://www.procon.com.au/HVDOSBox.htm

The number of different font sizes - and the display legibility of the fonts - varies somewhat with the Windows version.

The .FON fonts are for whatever reason not shown when you browse the windows/fonts dir with windows explorer. If you open a DOS window and type "dir *.fon" in the Fonts directory you can see them.
I am not sure, if you can access the fonts from a Web Browser. But I am sure you will find that out.

I came across this discussion because I spent already 2 hours looking for a different problem so I know how you guys feel and thought this will help :).
Cheers,

Carsten Cumbrowski
My Professional Homepage | My Personal Blog

Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 5:47 pm

I didn't include the Proggy fonts because they are bitmap fonts and not real TrueType scaleable fonts. I want something that scales to any size, and something that supports ClearType. This rules out bitmap fonts (*.FON files or ttf files based upon bitmaps like Proggy).

Although zMUD has used Courier in the past (the bitmap font, not Courier New which is TTF), CMUD needs to work better on Windows XP and Vista, and Microsoft is moving more towards ClearType in Vista, which is why I got interested in it. Also, as computer improve, people are generally getting larger screens with higher resolution (and LCDs are selling more than CRTs now). So, creating software that works well with this new hardware is important for CMUD.

The days of expecting certain screen resolutions is over. I remember back when working on zMUD when people were switching from 640x480 to 800x600 resolution. But these days, people can be running almost *any* resolution.

The trick is making CMUD look the best for new users, while providing the flexibility to change things for existing users. On newer hardware, the existing Courier bitmap font in zMUD looks pretty bad, so I'd like something better in CMUD.

Right now, I think it's between Consolas (once Microsoft removes the restrictions) and the Bitstream Vera font.

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:14 am

Cumbrowski: Yes I mentioned on Page 1 that I discovered various .fon files contained the Terminal font. Thanks for posting that page though quite interesting reading but Zugg would not be able to put that font in CMUD due to licencing reasons. I believe there is a method for enumerating the .fon files but I doubt Zugg will want to.

Zugg: Consolas IS distributed as standard in Vista but I have to warn you it really does look terrible on a CRT. I'll check out Bitstream Vera font and see what that is like.

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:23 am

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:32 am

Yeah, I know that Consolas is distributed with Vista. But until Microsoft either a) removes the current Visual Studio requirement, or b) makes the font generally available for non-Vista users, then I can't distribute Consolas with CMUD. This would be a real shame, so I hope Microsoft eventually loosens the distribution limits on this font. Right now, anyone who puts this font up for general download will get a nasty message from Microsoft telling you to remove the file.

In Consolas, the zero *is* slashed, but it's less annoying that with some other "slash" fonts. The slash doesn't extend outside the zero itself...it's just on the inside, and that makes it fine for me. No problem distinguishing it from an 8 (at least in Consolas).

I've already fixed CMUD so that *.FON files will show up in the font listing, so people can use them if they prefer.

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 2:43 am