13 Nov
2018
13 Nov
'18
4:40 a.m.
On 2018-11-13 12:11 AM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk wrote:
Guy said
That's not realistic in this case. The only artwork we have is much too
poor to be sources for redrawing, but we also know rather closely what
family the originals are from (grotesks and sans available mid-century).
Hmm, I posted to the list about this 3 hours ago,
and it hasn't appeared yet.
Is there an extra vetting process for posts that include links to web sites?
I included various links to font searching sites, cleaned-up samples of the DEC fonts
from my own scan (online) of a DEC PDP-8/S panel, and specific fonts I found via
search tools - that are very close or identical matches to the DEC panel fonts.
Should I repost, or just wait till it appears?
Guy
I sometimes find delays posting to cctalk when I (located +10 GMT) post before 10am
local
time, ie. it is still the previous day on the cctalk server and most of the rest of the
world. My post seems to disappear for up to ten hours or so. I don't recall any
trouble when
I post after 10am local time, it appears pretty much immediately. Well that's what it
seems
to be like, I could be wrong but I don't worry about it too much.
Regarding fonts on reproduced panels. This is a common problem in vintage vehicle
restoration
when reproduction dataplates are made and sold. Some of the repos are redrawn on computer
and
retyped with a close font.
However this isn't really good enough for a demanding restorer. I've even seen a
repro
nomenclature plate with a typo, which would be annoying considering the cost of some of
these
things. If you have access to the original, nothing really beats reproducing the _image_
of
the panel with all its nuanced spacing, miniscule changes in letter size and orientation
and the like rather than recreating the panel.
In Noel's case the originals are probably not at hand, so there is obviously no
choice but to
recreate them. From off the shelf fonts we can get much closer than
Deja Vu or
Helvetica (although almost certainly not using free fonts).
As you say, one of the challenges is that only a fraction of the
diversity of pre-digital typefaces has survived into digital, and
specimen books are also rare, but I'm checking with a couple of other
typographers because the DX11 panel font might be digitally available.
It seems weirdly familiar although I can't yet put a name to it.
--Toby
I can't help with the font but it makes me think
of the curved font on
the front
of the PDP-11 consoles and in the handbook where the
lowercase t has a different length depending
on whether it is in or at the end of a word.
Steve.