There's a whole subculture for fonts smaller than 8 by 8, with real world uses for things such as small LED displays, for example. This is at the extreme end, though.
I wonder if there are really tiny fonts that make use of color. For example, this 2-pixel wide Picket Right font could theoretically be even thinner if we were to use sub-pixel features.
At least, I think the 2-pixel high Two Slice font can be more legible with some anti-aliasing.
Pad grid controllers like the Novation Launchpad, and its indie, open-source counterpart, Mystrix Pro, have an 8x8 grid. At first this style of controller didn't use any lights, but as the manufacturing and features progressed, they went towards one RGB LED per pad. So, of course, you end up doing some text and graphics on the resulting grid. Mystrix uses a scrolling marquee which isn't ideal, but does get the job done.
And yeah, you could throw on more hardware to have a display nearby and use that for text. That is not the problem being solved though.
I think readability is helped a lot by the low entropy of English words and sentences, i.e. if you can’t make out one letter, you’ll probably get it anyway from the context.
It’s not so readable if you test it with random strings.
I think most of what makes this font readable is the user using context to sort of guess at what the word could be.
If you start writing things that aren’t sentences normal people would use (or especially if you start mixing case) it doesn’t hold up. Still interesting for a “normal” use case though.
Some of the characters/words (particularly "c"/"can") sort of look like they've been cropped from the top, trusting the brain to fill in the bottom half. Reminds me of what Sandisk did with the "S" in their redesign. I wonder if there's any research behind this?
I love this. It speaks to me in a similar ways as a lot of the AI zeitgeist—why shouldn’t we optimize for how the brain actually operates at scale versus hundreds-years-old ideas about ligatures designed for reading in candlelight? (In the AI case, a romanticism for having to learn and prove memory in such a rote way)
okay but what about "c" being nearly the same as "z", neither of which look like the character and are nearly(?) identical. Is our brain supposed to just be able to figure it out?
The Atari 2600 had pretty good vertical resolution (assuming you could set up the next line in 76 cycles) but limited horizontal resolution. A 3x5 font is possible, but good luck distinguishing N from M.
This font seems to use characters up to 5 pixels wide, which helps with its near-legibility.
The thing to do with a 3x5 font is to make the capital N into a giant lowercase n. Then M H and W all become similar letters, just with a different location for the horizontal bar.
There's a whole subculture for fonts smaller than 8 by 8, with real world uses for things such as small LED displays, for example. This is at the extreme end, though.
Also https://stormgold.itch.io/picket-right-font
I wonder if there are really tiny fonts that make use of color. For example, this 2-pixel wide Picket Right font could theoretically be even thinner if we were to use sub-pixel features.
At least, I think the 2-pixel high Two Slice font can be more legible with some anti-aliasing.
Yes. https://advent.blinry.org/2018/17
and https://stormgold.itch.io/two-slice - are these the same authors or what?
Ah! the reddit user description hoverbox for u/trampolinebears says "Fonts: stormgold.itch.io" so that connects the dots.
That one is relatively easier to read, I guess because it looks like normal font that was cut into strips.
Ya literally I could make out 85% quickly.
The linked one is unreadable at all to me lol
Thanks for sharing this. I enjoy seeing these cool subcultures; they evoke the hacker ethos.
I’m not a hacker but I really appreciate their ethos. It’s like punk. I’m not punk either. But I will defend it all with my dying breathe.
There's some quilting at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45236312 .
> such as small LED displays
The highest DPI screen is 127,000 PPI. You could fit over 14,000 lines of 8x8 text in a single inch tall screen.
For reference, a decent monitor is 140 PPI.
I'm pretty sure we don't need to go below 8x8 if physical size is the issue.
Pad grid controllers like the Novation Launchpad, and its indie, open-source counterpart, Mystrix Pro, have an 8x8 grid. At first this style of controller didn't use any lights, but as the manufacturing and features progressed, they went towards one RGB LED per pad. So, of course, you end up doing some text and graphics on the resulting grid. Mystrix uses a scrolling marquee which isn't ideal, but does get the job done.
And yeah, you could throw on more hardware to have a display nearby and use that for text. That is not the problem being solved though.
No, small LED displays with like 25 ppi. Think arduino/embedded.
I think readability is helped a lot by the low entropy of English words and sentences, i.e. if you can’t make out one letter, you’ll probably get it anyway from the context.
It’s not so readable if you test it with random strings.
I'm blown away. I'd have sworn that wasn't possible. It's brilliant. Bravo.
[flagged]
Do you think anyone is suggesting this should actually be used for a practical purpose?
Idiotic seems strong. It's an art piece, is it simply not to your taste in art?
Exactly. My taste in art skews idiotic, so what! :)
Meanwhile, 3x5 fonts are actually usable.
Capital H is cursed... unconnected pixels, indistinguishable from 'ii' or "II". The concept's cool, but for this one point the wrong choice was made.
Try reading "HiGh sky buys The lies" in the font. Pretty difficult to make out what it says...
I think most of what makes this font readable is the user using context to sort of guess at what the word could be.
If you start writing things that aren’t sentences normal people would use (or especially if you start mixing case) it doesn’t hold up. Still interesting for a “normal” use case though.
I'm more concerned about V X Y all being identical.
How will I know if it's waxy or wavy?
Like all of language: context.
Why would hair be like 80s synthpop, or potatoes be in any way related to a by-product of honey?
Hair can be either waxy or wavy or both.
Very cool - note that lowercase b, l and h are the same
Really like that zero glyph. I wonder if, instead of Roman numerals, one could use ligatures to encode numeric strings as binary… 42 as 010101
(I sort of randomly picked 42, didn't know it was such an interesting string… Douglas Adams must have known that)
101010 - I'm guessing you know, and want to find out how long it takes for someone to notice and respond.
little endian vs big endian.
I wish I had this back capability when I used to program my TI graphing calculators back in highschool!
Some of the characters/words (particularly "c"/"can") sort of look like they've been cropped from the top, trusting the brain to fill in the bottom half. Reminds me of what Sandisk did with the "S" in their redesign. I wonder if there's any research behind this?
> You can probably read this, even if you wish you couldn't.
Um... Nope. I can't.
I can get some of the letters, but not most of them, unfortunately.
Love the concept, and the art, that goes into things like this. But I just cannot read it.*
* I have nerve problems in my eyes. I'm not legally blind... Most of the time.
Yeah, a lot of words/letters made sense, but I definitely had to use some deduction to read it.
Interesting, and given the limitation, it’s quite impressive.
But I think “probably” is optimistic. I’d say “possibly” is more realistic.
I can't really read anything with that, so somewhat readable is very moot.
Pity there's no italics ...
SCNR
I wonder if it's possible to train to read text encoded as one colored pixel per letter, or even per token.
Given how people can learn languages, absolutely yes.
A thread last year with lots of related subpixel type things:
Nanofont3x4: Smallest readable 3x4 font with lowercase (2015)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39735675
I love this. It speaks to me in a similar ways as a lot of the AI zeitgeist—why shouldn’t we optimize for how the brain actually operates at scale versus hundreds-years-old ideas about ligatures designed for reading in candlelight? (In the AI case, a romanticism for having to learn and prove memory in such a rote way)
okay but what about "c" being nearly the same as "z", neither of which look like the character and are nearly(?) identical. Is our brain supposed to just be able to figure it out?
O and 0 are very similar in lots of typefaces. And I and l and 1. Even u and v. Your brain's pretty good at figuring it out. Context helps a lot.
yeah I can read it ok
The Atari 2600 had pretty good vertical resolution (assuming you could set up the next line in 76 cycles) but limited horizontal resolution. A 3x5 font is possible, but good luck distinguishing N from M.
This font seems to use characters up to 5 pixels wide, which helps with its near-legibility.
The thing to do with a 3x5 font is to make the capital N into a giant lowercase n. Then M H and W all become similar letters, just with a different location for the horizontal bar.
That's one of the possibilities, but one can also use asymmetry to evoke an illusion of diagonality, as in this font:
https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/1426620/3x6-pixel...
Is it just me or the s Z and z S should be swapped?
Love this. Brings so much joy. Try some punctuation. Hilarity ensues.
Cool. I hate it.