On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:53:16 -0400, Ph. D. <
phild@...> wrote:
> For a more modern attempt, see this site:
>
> http://www.geocities.com/bouhadjeraa/alphabet.htm
Most interesting! The constraints are a 5 x7 matrix, which has some uses,
especially in rock-bottom-cost electronics, and very small displays.
However, as handheld PDAs (such as the palm series) have shown, there is
no compelling reason to restrict a design to a 5x7 matrix. LED-array text
displays meant to be read from several meters' distance use character
cells larger than 5 x7 in most cases.
(meters'?)
I strongly suspect that 24-pin impact dot-matrix (and thermal?) printers
were developed by the Japanese to be able to print their standard
~2,300+ kanji acceptably.
Present-day displays and printers have a fine enough pitch (spacing) for
their individual pixels/dots that a given "character cell" is really a
respectably-large matrix, and only font designers and such people actually
know the size of a "character cell".
(Clarifications? Please ask!)
--
Nicholas Bodley /*|*\ Waltham, Mass.
Falling behind on reading Qalam, again...
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