You may find it interesting to examine the "clean" font family, in the X11 core distribution. It contains around 30 fonts in fixed-pitch pixel cells ranging from 4x6 to 8x16 and 9x15. A few sizes (esp. 8px width) include bold weights and there are even a couple of italics. Just fire up an xterm with the font of your choice and see how it looks, but do note that the automatic "smear bolding" does not produce good results.<br>
<br>The 4x6 font uses a 3x5 pixel character cell, reserving a single pixel each for inter-line and inter-character spacing. The glyphs are all unique, for the 7-bit ASCII range. A number of optical illusions make it possible to read text at this size. Your brain actually pattern-matches on the shape of the words. Larger fonts are always easier to read. This font essentially represents the limit of legibility for bitmapped fonts.<br>
<br>Still, I do not recommend using the 4x6 at ~300dpi. It was designed for ~75dpi. The whole point of reaching the 250dpi+ range is that the individual pixels SHOULD become indistinguishable, leading to a qualitatively different visual experience. This is similar to the smooth color rendition we get with CMYK half-toned dots in a magazine.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: "Dotan Cohen" <<a href="mailto:dotancohen@gmail.com">dotancohen@gmail.com</a>><br>
To: "List for Openmoko community discussion" <<a href="mailto:community@lists.openmoko.org">community@lists.openmoko.org</a>><br>Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2008 20:11:37 +0200<br>Subject: Re: QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)<br>
2008/6/9 Flemming Richter Mikkelsen <<a href="mailto:quatrox@gmail.com">quatrox@gmail.com</a>>:<br>
> On 6/9/08, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler <<a href="mailto:raster@openmoko.org">raster@openmoko.org</a>> wrote:<br>
> [...]<br>
>> an 80x24 terminal is possible to make it readable @ qvga - if we allow<br>
>> scrolling. (and possible in landscape with an ultra-tiny 4-pixel wide font -<br>
>> possible (3 pixels for text, 1 for space). not very nice though.<br>
><br>
> How can u separate @, #, $, S, %, æ, ø, o, etc, when only using 3 pixels?<br>
> 5 pix + 1 pix space is a minimum for good reading, unless some chars<br>
> take more space than others.<br>
><br>
<br>
5 pix + 1 pix space is a minimum for reading<br>
There, fixed that for you. Getting by with 3+1 pixels is not reading.<br>
You may be able to dechipher words, but that is not reading. Reading<br>
is when the brain skips over large portions of the text and absorbs<br>
the full meaning, because it is able to recognize familiar shapes and<br>
derive from them meaning. 3+1 cannot create the different shapes<br>
necessary for reading.<br>
<br>
7 pix + 2 pix space is a minimum for _good_ reading<br>
<br>
Dotan Cohen<br>
</blockquote></div><br>