SGI screen fonts converted for OS X | Hacker News Reader

SGI screen fonts converted for OS X

njr.sabi.net

64 pointsingve26 comments

They are really nice, but I wonder if the fonts we have available today are not better - if only because more eyeballs have been using and improving them.

Also, having unicode glyphs is more important now that it was before. If my font can't show "άꚍαραξία", or "∀ a,b,c ∈ ℝ³", I think I am missing something, even if it looks good.

Droid Sans and Deja vu Sans look perfect to me. But I never got to use an actual SGI, so maybe I'm missing something about the technical advantage of using these fonts.

The main advantage of this sort of font is that you can see the pixels. This may not be to all tastes, but at ~95dpi I find pixelly fonts easier on the eye. The right angles and hard edges seem to make it easier for my eyes to get the right focus setting.

I usually use the 6x13 font from here: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html - all the Unicode you can eat!

(I think it's nicer than the 6x13 SGI one (Screen 13pt on OS X) which is a bit cramped-looking. The 7x14 SGI one (Screen 14pt on OS X) is much better - looks like basically the same glyphs as 6x13, but with an extra pixel breathing room.)

I'm quite fond of non-antialiased fonts on regular DPI monitors flipped to portrait orientation, secondary ones on machines where that means VGA output. And lacklustre TN panels on laptops. Some environments really need more forgiving technology…

The right angles and hard edges seem to make it easier for my eyes to get the right focus setting.

I agree; when I first used an LCD, the best part of the experience was how sharp everything looked. On a CRT the pixels were somewhat blurry no matter what, but the LCD made the pixels actually look like little squares and it felt like my eyes were in focus. I can stand antialiasing on large fonts but small text looks better to me without AA, and subpixel AA just makes me feel dizzy since my eyes seem to be continually trying to focus to get those sharp edges.

Misc-Fixed is my favourite font too, although I've modified mine with a slashed zero to make 0 and O more distinctive.

Once you cross a certain age there is an appeal to seeing things how they used to be back in the day.

I don't know what that age is, but I'm 54 and I haven't hit it yet!

I realise now my statement was incorrect. Nostalgia is not age related, its a state of mind.

This is obviously subjective, but I'd argue that not only are the fonts we have available today better, but that anti-aliased fonts have been better for years. Even monospaced programming fonts. This includes fonts descended from Bitstream Vera (which include the Deja Vu Sans you mentioned, as well as Apple's Menlo), and we have some fonts -- like Microsoft's excellent Consolas and the amazing Input series from Font Bureau -- which are explicitly designed to be displayed with anti-aliasing.

In the time these SGI fonts were new --- really up through the turn of the century -- the case for pixel programming fonts was better, I think, especially when you used light text on a dark background; our "high-resolution" displays were rarely more than 75 dpi with 18-bit color. But as historically important as unaliased 9-point Monaco may be, I'm not going to use it for nostalgic purposes.

NeXTstep (from which OS X is derived) used a font for its terminal window that could very well be this same font, perhaps with minor tweaks:

http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/nextstep-1.0.png

It would be funny if this font is indeed just coming full circle.

The SGI font has a bit more personality: http://i.imgur.com/P5GN4uZ.png

The old NeXT font is actually very close to dear old Monaco: http://i.imgur.com/Cf1xED2.png

There's also the 4Dwm theme for fvwm: http://4dwm.lumpiarze.nstrefa.pl/

Wish there was something similar for Windows 10.

I enjoyed that desktop, but couldn't tolerate those aliased italic fonts today. Hopefully there is a way to have subpixel font rendering.

Trinitron CRTs with the SGI cube at the bottom of the bezel were perfect for these fonts, they did the sub-pixel anti-aliasing beautifully thanks to the wonders of an analog signal with a little bit of interlacing thrown in for good measure. 1280x1024 was big back then.

Didn't late SGIs have those huge 24" 2300 x 1400 CRTs that weighed more than a VW Beetle?

I had one, and yes! They were HEAVY. But, they were awesome too.

There was at one point an effort to port the entire "Indigo Magic" (i.e including all Motif toolkits etc.) / 4DWM desktop to Linux. It made some progress early on but then it seemed to evaporate into vapourware. The website is still online but doesn't appear to have been updated since ~ 2007: http://5dwm.org

Awesome! Now if someone could port the "Twilight" animated wallpaper....

http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?t=16282

Now if only someone would finish SGI emulation so I can run my old programs without loud fans, dying hard drives and the equivalent of a space heater war in the room up.

I see you too have an MXE Octane :)

I have one too. Been thinking I should power it back on now winter is coming.

I still have Octane2 at work somewhere stored. I need to boot that baby up and smirk for awhile! Maybe even start a Maya session. What was the command in boot time to check the hardware installed? I forgot all of those shenanigans.

Are you thinking of `hinv`? I have never actually had my hands on an SGI box but somehow just remembered this from all the reading I did back when I was lusting after one :)

It is hinv! I was very fortunate to have worked and had nonstop access to SGI boxes from very early age. Most of learning and work I did was on Indigo2 boxes (green and purple ones (MAXIMUM IMPACT!) :)) and later on on Octanes and some on O2s if Octane was having a vacation. One machine that, to this day, I really adored was also the first SGI I had my hands on - Crimson. We didn't spend much time together because new SGI boxes were on their way towards where I was at, but little time we spent together was magical. I was (VERY) young and impressionable! Other machines I had pretty much learned on and later on worked on (graphics) were either Sun boxes or Amigas. I didn't get serious introduction to PCs and Macs (apart from games) until far later on. SGI is where I started. Time to bring that Octane2 to life. Thanks!

SGI fuel. But I had an octane at work, wow that was unbearable!

Also, I'd like someone to port all those "cool" 3d demos that came with SGI boxes. I have fond memories of playing with "button fly" and thinking it was amazing at the time (1996?).

Excellent. Used an O2 a lot, and I found those fonts very readable too.

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