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A comment on 5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens.

Re:5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens by ludocode on Wednesday April 22, 2026 @03:15PM (#47867985)
The 5x5 is very nice, and the 3x5 isn't bad either. Unfortunately neither of them have all of ASCII. The size is also a bit misleading because you need to add spacing so really they need a 6x6 or 4x6 grid.

I'm quite fond of Spleen:

https://github.com/fcambus/spleen

It has a 5x8 font which has all of ASCII, but most glyphs are actually 4x8 and include horizontal spacing. I modified it to reduce the rest for a project I'm doing so all glyphs are 4x8. The result can be rendered on a 5x9 grid with a guaranteed line of horizontal and vertical spacing between all glyphs. It's very nice.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens by RachelF on Thursday April 23, 2026 @01:37AM (#47872560)
In the early 1980s there were actually word processors for the Apple 2 which had a 40 column display (7 pixel wide fonts default) that gave 60 columns using the a 5x5 font in graphics mode. It was a selling point.

The hardware solution was to buy an "80 column card" that gave 80 columns of proper text, if your monitor could handle it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens by tomtomtom777 on Thursday April 23, 2026 @01:14PM (#47878401)
At 3x5 it states:

> The "M", "W" and "Q" suffer, but it's still got a distinct O and zero.

The Q is weird; I would think it makes more sense to draw it as a zero with the bottom right set.

[ Parent | on HN ]