29 Apr
2016
29 Apr
'16
5:39 a.m.
schoedel at kw.igs.net wrote
On Thu, 28 Apr 2016 13:19:43 +0100, Rod Smallwood
wrote
I've also had a go at the dec font for the purpose of those 'good enough'
mastheads I
posted about here last year:
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/entry.php?544-A-good-enough-replica-of-the-digit…
I too found the font to be mostly circles and tengential lines except for the 's'
which
gave me a lot of trouble to draw nicely in my CAD program. I'm puzzled about the
notion
of 'o' not being a perfect circle as I found it to be quite so, at least on the
masthead.
As mentioned there are different 't's. I treat the whole masthead as an integral
CAD drawing -
I'm not trying to replicate Paul's near-enough Corel-drawn font (which I examined)
but
rather a correctly spaced and kerned piece of text, just as it is on the masthead.
I've made some test cuts in paper and vinyl on my CNC stencil cutter for both a
positive
(stick-on decal) and negative (for silkscreening) and the results are fairly promising,
but
I put it aside a while ago so I just need to find some time to get back into it.
Steve.
But they built it out of circles and straight
lines and that's what I do.
That's superficially, but not exactly, true. Even the 'o' is not a perfect
circle, and you can't get close to replicating the 's' or the digits that
way.
I took a stab at replicating the 'classic dec' font about a decade ago,
following
scanned DEC manuals wherever possible. I built up most of the basic ASCII set in
the outline form before suspending the project. (I suspect the solid form can
mostly be derived from paths through the middle of the outline strokes.) It did
get used a few years ago by our Jason T for some VCF Midwest graphics -
https://picasaweb.google.com/102190732096693814506/VCFMW50OfficialGraphics#…
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