1

So basically I somehow stepped into this webpage: [removed because it now redirects to a reward survey site]

And the first thing that hit me hard was the lovely DOS fonts, so naturally I wanted to get them into my IDE badly.

Opened the html source file and CSS file to find the font name:

@font-face
{
    font-family: 'Perfect DOS VGA 437';
    src: url('http://www.braindamage.vg/wp-content/themes/braindamage/dosfont.eot');
}
@font-face
{
    font-family: 'Perfect DOS VGA 437';
    src: url('http://www.braindamage.vg/wp-content/themes/braindamage/dosfont.svg#dos') format("svg"), url('http://www.braindamage.vg/wp-content/themes/braindamage/dosfont.ttf') format ('truetype');
}

So I download the font, add it using Control Panel -> Fonts. But once I start using it (notepad, MSVS 2008 & MSVS2010) I notice that it looks slightly off:

bad image

It seems like there's 1 extra pixel between each character.

How it should look:

web


What is causing it and how to fix this?

Is it the windows XP? (i have disabled font smoothing)

Or is there something wrong with the font file?

3
  • Try a slightly different font size? It's a bitmap font, so "in between" sizes will usually have problems with spacing.
    – iglvzx
    Mar 15, 2012 at 2:18
  • Tried that. Its a bitmap font size 12.
    – JBeurer
    Mar 15, 2012 at 2:19
  • 2
    FYI, that font wasn't part of DOS, it was the text-mode font built into your video card. Different cards had slightly different fonts, too.
    – Wyzard
    Mar 15, 2012 at 2:52

2 Answers 2

1

What you are seeing outside of the browser is the accurate rendering of the font (based on the file given). Looking at the CSS source, the author has made adjustments with letter-spacing and line-height:

font-family: 'Perfect DOS VGA 437','Fixedsys';
font-size: 12pt;
letter-spacing: -1px;
line-height: 16px;
2
  • ouch, i did not notice that. Is my memory just hazy, because that -1px letter spacing did make it look more like the DOS fonts I remember.
    – JBeurer
    Mar 15, 2012 at 2:33
  • Not sure. Fixedsys is a bit spaced out.
    – iglvzx
    Mar 15, 2012 at 2:44
2

Actually the observation about the pixel gaps being too wide are mostly accurate.

As there are multiple variatins of VGA / IBM PC fonts: http://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/

Some 8 pixel wide, some 9 pixel wide. The only difference for the most part being the gaps between the characters.

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