Comments on: Veer Says “Script Fonts Always Sell Better”

By: si

si — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 23:27:50 +0000

Here's the spec... http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=263&st=1 oldcomputers.com is a great site. Si

By: Mark Simonson

Mark Simonson — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:55:15 +0000

This is veering (ha!) completely OT I realize, but you might be interested in the recent book Digital Retro by Gordon Laing. It’s sort of a photo-essay/history of the home computer era. It’s got a UK slant to it (lots of Amstrads and Orics and such), but it made enjoyable light reading for me over the last week. All my earliest computers were in it (ZX80, Atari 400, etc.) and it brought back lots of memories.

I no longer have the ZX80, but I did pick up a ZX81 for free somewhere along the way. They both are about the size of a DVD case but squarer and about twice as thick. The ZX80 had 1k of RAM and 4k ROM and cost only $200. I sold it for $35 but kind of wish I’d kept it.

By: Hrant

Hrant — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 21:18:41 +0000

No, it was a ZX81*. Were the dimensions so small? Did it use less screen area for graphics or was text also limited to that size? I don’t remember. BTW, one thing I do remember is that it had keyboard shortcuts for reserved words (like “print”), and I think these were encoded to save memory.

* BTW, the total RAM (after expansion) was 17K, not 16. Huge difference of course.

hhp

By: si

si — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:58:06 +0000

> plus it had direct pixel addressing!

That may be technically correct, but the graphics resolution was only 66 x 44 pixels (black and white) so made it rather limited for charts. Perhaps you�re thinking of the Sinclair Spectrum?

Misspent youth = ZX81->VIC20->BBC Micro->Amstrad CPC->Toshiba MSX->C64->Atari ST etc.,

By: Hrant

Hrant — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 04:58:24 +0000

I once convinced a friend to buy a ZX81. After all, it was expandable to twice the memory of the computer I myself had back then (the original 8K PET), plus it had direct pixel addressing! Like you could draw graphs and stuff. Amazing. Even more amazing is that the guy is still my friend.

hhp

By: 42ndSSD

42ndSSD — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 03:33:15 +0000

Aw, no, no insult intended; the Amiga is friend to millions, enemy of few. It’s just that somewhere around here I have a largish collection of elegantly crappy (crappily elegant?) bitmap pi fonts for the Amiga.

I should’ve said something about the Sinclair ZX81 instead; nobody minds very much if I insult the lowly Sinclair.

By: Hrant

Hrant — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:03:43 +0000

I hope you’re not making fun of the Amiga, dude.
It was to computing what Hangul is to scripts.

hhp

By: 42ndSSD

42ndSSD — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:20:15 +0000

Isn’t this really asking the question of who’s actually buying the fonts, and for what purpose? (Ok, yeah, yeah, I’m slow.)

I suspect end lusers will cheerfully (willingly, slavishly) use a free Adobe font when they want a serif font. And those few radicals who are tired of using Arial or Comic Sans for a sans-serif will probably be looking for… Helvetica! (“Font Wars III: Revenge of the Linotron. The 70s are back and they’re fighting mad!”)

Of course nothing truly says “kwalety” quite like that free homespun pi font, of which there are only three zillion or so. I’m thinking of writing an essay on the appropriate use of pi fonts in desktop publishing, with a focus on how scaled Amiga bitmap fonts can improve any electronic document.

Quickly eliding over 50 other categories, that pretty much leaves script fonts. There aren’t many good free ones, and I’m pretty sure that’s an area where bad ones look… really, really bad, even to the untrained.

There’s also more obvious visual variety; Zapfino is markedly different from Satisfaction, Corinthia or Crayola, but for some it takes a microscope and hours of study to tell Helvetica and Comic Sans apart.

By: Grant Hutchinson

Grant Hutchinson — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 15:44:57 +0000

Which is why text fonts (at least the well-made stuff) should sell for more than display fonts. They simply last a lot longer.

Well-made fonts of any style or function should sell for more. I am continually surprised by how many quality designs (by talented designers) are practically given away.

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 09:04:40 +0000

> Karen, at the moment (and it is usually this way, I think), sans serif text faces are leading the fonts list. In fact, of the top ten, there are only three display/script fonts.

Yeah, I guess, the “mostly display” thing was just the impression I got scrolling down the list. There isn’t a lot of bodytext / serif fonts on the top sellers list.