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Comment by tpmoney | Hacker News Reader

Related, there's a public domain truetype font that's a pretty great copy of the original Chicago system font: https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/chicagoflf

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I was pondering using Chicago as default font, but it is pretty 'typecast' (no pun intended, this time ;-)) -- Charcoal (that was used in System 8.x onward) is a lot less 'known' and also, I think, a significant improvement...

But it is actually pretty easy to switch to Chicago in the library -- apart from the clone you mention, there is also a 'plain' TTF version of the original Chicago floating around...

Split the difference with Espy Sans as seen in Newton, eWorld, iPod Mini, and often predicted to be the default system font in “Copland” Mac OS 8 had it shipped: https://lowendmac.com/2000/using-the-espy-font/

t. satisfied Nu Sans shareware buyer http://www.scootergraphics.com/nusans/ :)

Bitmap fonts are beautiful. I think the original iPod(s) also used Apple's bitmap fonts including Chicago and Espy Sans.

I love Espy as my system font.

One benefit to having the Newton Connection Utilities and Toolkit installed is that beautiful font.

Charcoal fits the spirit of the hiDPI remake better to my eyes too. But as we're on 'spirit' and pedantry, the unaligned popup selectors in the demo look off to me, compare with

https://www.oreilly.com/api/v2/epubs/0201700042/files/020170...

or similar.

Maybe I'm weird, but I feel like that style of GUI design with OS 8 and 9 were the pinnacle of GUI styling. Well, maybe BeOS deserves mention as well. But you could put young children in front of a Mac at school, and they'd figure out how to do everything they needed to do without much help and with no distraction.

Yes there are a few tweaks to make -- I worked in 'passes' in the code, and my last 'pass' at the menus was a little while ago, normally I go and fix the little nags as I go along.

Last (big) pass was the text editor, which isn't totally finished and polished but I had to release something for the deadline ;-)

I found it fascinating that my brain readily accepts this as macOS Classic UI, even though, as you say, it's a kind of System 7++ - a neat trick to have pulled off. Then after a bit it starts nitpicking on alignment and spacing unasked, like some weird Apple Cult Manchurian Candidate.

The unaligned popup selectors scared me too... hope it won't be added to "get off my lawn"-faq ;)

> …there's a public domain truetype font that's a pretty great copy of the original Chicago system font…

You can also get the "real" TrueType Chicago font (designed by Bigelow & Holmes) via a System 7.6.1 download, then convert the TTF to OTF with FontForge's command line tool. https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1682-mac-os-7-6-x

  fontforge -script -c 'Open($1); Generate($2);' input_font.ttf output_font.otf

Why even go through that trouble? In what circumstance would you need an `otf` when a `ttf` won't suffice? (Genuinely curious, I've wondered this for a while because I've never seen something that supports `otf` but not `ttf`).

TrueType fonts of that era typically came in separate Windows and Macintosh versions due to implementation differences. One difference was how Windows relied on an additional `OS/2` (lol) table in the TrueType font data, unused by Mac OS: https://typedrawers.com/discussion/501/can-someone-explain-t...

The arguably bigger reason is that Mac OS didn't support "data fork TrueType fonts" (what most people probably think of when they think "TTF file") until Mac OS 8.5 (1998). Before then, TrueType and other fonts on the Macintosh were resource-fork-only, because "installing" a font prior to 1992 meant using a special Font Mover utility which actually grafted the font's resource data into the Macintosh System suitcase itself at an unused Resource ID#. Attempting to even copy such a font to a Windows system would yield a 0-byte file on the receiving end unless one knew what they were doing. System 7.1 (1992) added a dynamic "Fonts" folder in the System Folder but still expected to see them as Macintosh resources.

An Apple-commissioned font like Chicago probably never had an official data-fork-plus-OS/2-table "Windows Version" made of them at all. Since the actual Bézier curve data (`glyf` table) was the same on either platform, it was possible to homebrew a Windows version of a Macintosh font or Macintosh version of a Windows font.

Upvoted for implausibly specific domain knowledge.

At one point I recall TTF hinting being patent-encumbered, but you bring up a great point — any patents surely have expired by now.

Modern versions of macOS also include the "Silom" Thai-language font, which uses Chicago for its Latin glyphs.

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