Based on Reproducing Typewriter, a letterpress typeface from c. 1906 used to create fake typewritten letters for promotional material. Where other monospace typefaces replicated actual typewriters, Reproducing Typewriter had improvements for better readability at smaller point sizes and/or where poor quality reproduction was an issue.
I thought its features would make it the basis of a good coding font, too. Old Timey Mono is much closer to the original while Old Timey Code makes it an even better typeface for writing source code.
It was the coding font used in the Turbo Pascal 3.0 user manual. I've not seen it elsewhere except old patents' cover pages.
Enjoy and if you have any comments or questions, comment or enquire away.
Looking at the examples, they look good, though one thing stands out, the "w" seems to be bolder than the other letters. The "m" seems fine, as do the other letters and symbols, just the "w".
Thanks so much for making it! Usually fonts like this are a non-starter for me since they lack Cyrillic letters. Your inclusion of those symbols is much appreciated.
Thank you so much for making and sharing this. I'm especially grateful that you included the code variant. I'm not a programmer but love monospace fonts but the lack of a slashed zero in so many otherwise lovely fonts has been a deal breaker for me!
What is it that makes slashed zeroes so nuch more appealing than the other kinds of "zeroes"?
Slashed zeroes are definitely much better than those nasty dotted inverse donut zeroes
How does a dot in a zero even make any kinda logical sense? It's like a piece of dough floating in midair in the center of a donut
Dotted zeroes [insert copypasta] bad
I don't even know why I'm so obsessed with the slash in zeroes
I will defend the honor of dotted zeros! I really like the zero in Space Mono, I think that nailed the retro future aesthetic.
IMH(and no design school)O when the character is oblong and the dot is a circle, it creates a similar contrast to the straight slash through an ellipse, but with less visual weight.
Based on the first link, it seems as though zero and upper-case "O" are very similar. (My eyes cannot discern a difference, but I admit that my eyes are not top-notch.)
The original typewriter had no "0" or "1" you were expected to use "I" or "O" in place. I suspect an authentic typeface should have trouble distinguishing them.
and having said that, forget authenticity, I really appreciate typefaces that make an effort to distinguish all characters.
This is pretty nice: thanks for including polytonic Greek and macrons over Latin vowels including over y. I especially love how the breathing marks and accents look together over initial vowels in Greek, and I love zeta (ζ) and xi (ξ) in this font.
Might I make a few specific suggestions:
- allow combining breve over Latin y as well: sometimes that's handy for indicating contrast
- check the height of stacking diacritical marks: a perispomenos tonos or circumflex accent over a breathing mark over a vowel (like in εἶναι eĩnai) ends up stacking up tall enough to intersect with descenders (like on ζ zeta) from the line above
- the circumflex over alpha (ᾶ) looks really good, because it follows the curve of the alpha itself, but circumflex over eta (ῆ) looks off-center, because it left-aligns to the ear on the left of eta. The same could be said for the iota subscript (ᾳῃῳ): it looks great under alpha and omega, but it's a bit awkward under eta because of how far to the left it is.
- have you considered adding a variation for the Porsonic or single-curve circumflex?
Just the uppercase variant ẞ - the lowercase ß _is_ there. Notably, uppercase ẞ didn't exist at the time the source typeface was designed – it was only officially adopted 111 years later in 2017.
If you want to use non standard fonts, I think, you should use XeLaTex to compile your file. After installing the font in the system, this just worked on my Ubuntu:
Dutch is also not supported. Presumbly no support for the 'ij' digraph. But do you even need that in a monospace font? Admittedly old Dutch typewriters used to have a single character for it, but that's really old-timey.
I'm currently using an old copy of Letter Gothic 12 Pitch from an ancient Ventura Publisher CD, and like that style a lot, so definitely going to try this.
I thought its features would make it the basis of a good coding font, too. Old Timey Mono is much closer to the original while Old Timey Code makes it an even better typeface for writing source code.
It was the coding font used in the Turbo Pascal 3.0 user manual. I've not seen it elsewhere except old patents' cover pages.
Enjoy and if you have any comments or questions, comment or enquire away.
https://github.com/dse/old-timey-mono-font
https://webonastick.com/fonts/old-timey-mono/
What is it that makes slashed zeroes so nuch more appealing than the other kinds of "zeroes"? Slashed zeroes are definitely much better than those nasty dotted inverse donut zeroes
How does a dot in a zero even make any kinda logical sense? It's like a piece of dough floating in midair in the center of a donut
Dotted zeroes [insert copypasta] bad
I don't even know why I'm so obsessed with the slash in zeroes
IMH(and no design school)O when the character is oblong and the dot is a circle, it creates a similar contrast to the straight slash through an ellipse, but with less visual weight.
Old Timey Code fixes both of these-- it has a slashed zero and redraws the number 1 to be distinct (angles the top serif).
and having said that, forget authenticity, I really appreciate typefaces that make an effort to distinguish all characters.
Might I make a few specific suggestions:
- allow combining breve over Latin y as well: sometimes that's handy for indicating contrast
- check the height of stacking diacritical marks: a perispomenos tonos or circumflex accent over a breathing mark over a vowel (like in εἶναι eĩnai) ends up stacking up tall enough to intersect with descenders (like on ζ zeta) from the line above
- the circumflex over alpha (ᾶ) looks really good, because it follows the curve of the alpha itself, but circumflex over eta (ῆ) looks off-center, because it left-aligns to the ear on the left of eta. The same could be said for the iota subscript (ᾳῃῳ): it looks great under alpha and omega, but it's a bit awkward under eta because of how far to the left it is.
- have you considered adding a variation for the Porsonic or single-curve circumflex?
\usepackage{mathspec} \setallmainfonts(Digits,Latin){Old Timey Mono}
\begin{document}
Just test some equation \begin{equation} \frac{e^x}{2-x} = \int_0^\infty f(x)dx \end{equation}
\end{document}
Dutch is also not supported. Presumbly no support for the 'ij' digraph. But do you even need that in a monospace font? Admittedly old Dutch typewriters used to have a single character for it, but that's really old-timey.