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Have you seen this font?

T

ta0

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Joined
Oct 10, 2014
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25
Hi, I was wondering if you guys know where this "handwritten" font is from? I have tried online font identifiers but it is too old. I have some reason to believe it might be from some late eighties/early ninties computer that was popular in Europe.
http://postimg.org/image/waz1x9rgx/


This is a handwriting / calligraphy font in very low resolution pixel bitmap format. The top 2 rows has been enlarged 3x to make it easier to read on a modern screen, but the actual font is like the bottom 2 rows (very tiny, like ~16x20 pixels per character, although it has dynamic width at least so some are only 12 pixels wide, some are 20, etc.)

The letters had fixed ligatures exactly like in the picture (the cutting into individual letters has been done correctly.)

The picture has been hand digitized exactly from a scanned image, I believe the original print was made in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

It is possible it is just a very low point size of a larger print, but I very much doubt it, because of the way it was used. So it is 99% probable that the font data only had this low resolution. It is also probable that the font was one of the default fonts included in some common word processor software.
 
Can you show the original scanned image? There may be clues there as to the originating system from which a search of magazines could indicate the exact font. Not enough information in just the little snippet.

Bitstream had several script fonts that were commonly licensed. MS Windows 2.x had a vector script font that had a similar spindly look.
 
Sorry, the original scanned image was just a piece of printer paper, it looks exactly like that. No magazine or anything else. It was simply a label printed out by somebody. These are the only characters. The characters were like 3 inches tall, and "pixly" just like this, so it was easy to digitize perfectly.

I'll look into Bitstream and Windows 2.0 though, thanks!
 
That does make it difficult to determine. There were hundreds of programs just for printing banners to which can be added graphics, presentation, and word processing tools. The major commercial titles often had Bitstream licenses and the cheap offerings had fonts heavily inspired by the commercial foundries.

The design does look to be from an outline font without hinting. Hand crafted for size or hinted should make for a smoother appearance. It is not from Windows 2; Windows SCRIPT.FON results in a similar look but the lower loop on the J is much larger than in the provided sample.
 
Can you tell if it was printed using an impact printer or a laser jet? It reminds me of the script fonts in the IQ Engineering SuperCartridge or SuperCartridge II.
 
I've seen something like this in a magazine ad for an add-on for dot matrix printers that would give you more fonts. It included a script font called "Penman".
 
Thanks for all the suggestions! I verified that the Windows 2.0 "Script" font was not it, but it was so similar it has to be from the same time period at least.

Unfortunately, the printer technology was not obvious from the banner, it might even have been printed on a printer and then enlarged by photocopy.

Because of the town and the time period, it was probably an engineer who did this. Might have been on the company printer. But most likely this was somebody who proudly printed this banner on his new word processor on his flashy new computer and marvelous bubble jet printer, or something like that :) So if I was gambling man I would bet that whatever it was it was something that was common and came pre-installed with the computer.

I have tried to display the fonts of Microsoft Word 5 for DOS and WordPerfect 5 for DOS, but the old Adobe font files don't seem to open. Does anybody know how? They are called .WA0. For some reason I can not get Word to display graphical fonts in DOSBOX and WP doesn't want to open the Adobe fonts.
 
Look for a "print preview" type option. Although I can't remember off the top of my head which versions had that ability. In DOS editors, often the only way to see how a document would look was to print it out. Some printers even had special built in ROM fonts.
 
Well, I think I have been able to preview all the fonts in Word for DOS, and some of the Word Perfect fonts. Thanks!

This font seems to be that it is somewhat amateurishly done, there are several irregularities/mistakes in the ligatures. That could mean that it was in a super tight ROM, but more likely that it was hand edited one letter at a time with that type of drawing program where you move the cursor with the arrow keys and press space to set/unset the pixels! The second thing is the "ornamentation" (I don't know what the proper term is) of the capitals, which is very modest for a script font. The S is particularly elegant.

This makes a cartridge like IQ Engineering sound somewhat likely. Unfortunately, those cartridges are made of unobtainium, and there is virtually not a trace of them on the internet. Further, IQE was only in the US/California right? The label was printed in Europe.
 
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