I have spent a fair bit of time over the past few days experimenting with an installation of Microsoft Office (Word 5.1 etc.) on A/UX, and have discovered that there are a number of really excellent screen fonts that make work with text a great deal easier on older hardware.
Having been using Macs and older software for so long (I bought Word 5.1 when it was new and used it extensively, writing and editing millions of words), you'd think that I would have figured this out before, but I had not — so chances are that there are others who are similarly "challenged."
One of the major frustrations I have had over the years relates to the difficulty of reading screen fonts on older systems/ monitors. The Mac's 72dpi is not even as high a resolution as a fax, so it stands to reason that fonts are going to be hard to read on any older system or screen. A typical symptom is an italicized word or phrasewhich runs into the next word or phrase [thus], or punctuation that is more or less indistinct (what is a comma and what is a period? Can be hard to tell!).
It turns out that there are a select few fonts that were actually designed not for print (though they print just fine) so much as to overcome the display problems inherent in the use of technologies current in the 90s. These fonts are still available. Apple itself produced a bitmapped font called Espy Sans for use on screen (it has to be extracted by ResEdit from the System 7.5 Apple Guide, though it was also partially included in the eWorld software distribution), but there are no printer fonts included, so Espy Sans is something of a non-starter, unless you are prepared to do some serious work in Fontographer or pay for a Shareware version. However, Microsoft spent a lot of money on two specific fonts meant to display correctly on older monitors, and that are really excellent at resolutions between 9 and 12 points. The fonts are both TrueType, they have an extended character set, and they are very easy on the eye on a older system or screen.
The fonts are Georgia and Verdana. They are excellent ergonomic solutions to a persistent problem one faces in using older computers. The first is a serif font and the second is a sans. I prefer the second slightly on my screen, and suspect that it would work out much better for use in serious text work, but YMMV.
I have had these in my System Folder on OS8, OS9 and OSX for years, and had thought that they looked somewhat plain-Jane and were indistinguishable from all the rest — until I did some digging for a solution and tried them out on the kind of system on which they were meant to be used, just in the past few days. I have discovered that they really are excellent and a step well above anything else I have tried over the years. With the possible exception of Courier, nothing displays so well on an old system.
Georgia and Verdana are included in standard Microsoft Office distributions such as Office 2001, and they are freely available on the web if you go looking, as from the beginning, Microsoft gave them away freely. Good for you, Bill!
Having been using Macs and older software for so long (I bought Word 5.1 when it was new and used it extensively, writing and editing millions of words), you'd think that I would have figured this out before, but I had not — so chances are that there are others who are similarly "challenged."
One of the major frustrations I have had over the years relates to the difficulty of reading screen fonts on older systems/ monitors. The Mac's 72dpi is not even as high a resolution as a fax, so it stands to reason that fonts are going to be hard to read on any older system or screen. A typical symptom is an italicized word or phrasewhich runs into the next word or phrase [thus], or punctuation that is more or less indistinct (what is a comma and what is a period? Can be hard to tell!).
It turns out that there are a select few fonts that were actually designed not for print (though they print just fine) so much as to overcome the display problems inherent in the use of technologies current in the 90s. These fonts are still available. Apple itself produced a bitmapped font called Espy Sans for use on screen (it has to be extracted by ResEdit from the System 7.5 Apple Guide, though it was also partially included in the eWorld software distribution), but there are no printer fonts included, so Espy Sans is something of a non-starter, unless you are prepared to do some serious work in Fontographer or pay for a Shareware version. However, Microsoft spent a lot of money on two specific fonts meant to display correctly on older monitors, and that are really excellent at resolutions between 9 and 12 points. The fonts are both TrueType, they have an extended character set, and they are very easy on the eye on a older system or screen.
The fonts are Georgia and Verdana. They are excellent ergonomic solutions to a persistent problem one faces in using older computers. The first is a serif font and the second is a sans. I prefer the second slightly on my screen, and suspect that it would work out much better for use in serious text work, but YMMV.
I have had these in my System Folder on OS8, OS9 and OSX for years, and had thought that they looked somewhat plain-Jane and were indistinguishable from all the rest — until I did some digging for a solution and tried them out on the kind of system on which they were meant to be used, just in the past few days. I have discovered that they really are excellent and a step well above anything else I have tried over the years. With the possible exception of Courier, nothing displays so well on an old system.
Georgia and Verdana are included in standard Microsoft Office distributions such as Office 2001, and they are freely available on the web if you go looking, as from the beginning, Microsoft gave them away freely. Good for you, Bill!
] ]'>
] ]'>
)] ]'>
