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origin of XGP fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos)

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Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> writes:
> Kragen Javier Sitaker wrote:
>> I wonder where they [the XGP fonts] came from?
>
> I read a story somwhere, but I forgot the details and where I found it.
> It was something like getting a font catalog from a major foundry and
> digitizing it by hand.
>
> People also made their own; the AST file format is just a text file with
> pixel data, and on ITS there's FED (font "editor") to display a font on
> the 340 or a Knight TV.  I think SAIL had something else, certaily so
> when TeX and Metafont were developed.
>
> "The Last Whole XGP Font Catalog" (play on "Last Whole Earth Catalog")
> has a lot to say about the XGP.

I was reading Butler Lampson’s 01988 retrospective on the Alto today
<https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/61975.66921> and he answered this
question:

: The first imager, written by Peter Deutsch, drove the Xerox Graphics
: Printer.  This machine is slow (five pages/minute) and low resolution
: (200 dots/inch); it is also asynchronous, so the imager can take as
: long as it likes to generate each line of the raster. Only crude
: imaging software was developed for it, together with a few fonts.
: Raster fonts were unheard of at the time, except in 5 × 7 and 7 × 9
: resolution for terminals, or at very high resolution for expensive
: photo-typesetters. The XGP fonts were developed entirely manually,
: using an editor that allows the operator to turn individual dots in
: the roughly 20 × 20 matrix on and off. They had to be new designs,
: since it is impractical to faithfully copy a printer’s font at such
: low resolution. These XGP fonts were later widely used in
: universities.


Kragen

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boxing all integers (was Re: Resources to learn common lisp?) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-29 17:52 -0300
  Re: boxing all integers (was Re: Resources to learn common lisp?) Alan Bawden <alan@csail.mit.edu> - 2026-08-30 17:24 -0400
    Re: boxing all integers (was Re: Resources to learn common lisp?) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-08-31 03:11 -0300
  origin of XGP fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org> - 2026-09-28 10:44 -0300
    Re: origin of XGP fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Peter Flass <Peter@Iron-Spring.com> - 2026-09-28 07:33 -0700
      Re: origin of XGP fonts (was Re: reprints of old AI memos) Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.invalid> - 2026-09-28 22:53 +0800

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