5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens • Hacker News Board

Re: 5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens

#41

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #31

One nice use for these tiny fonts is large text in terminals. Unicode now has 2x4 (from Kaypro), 2x3 (from Teletext, TRS-80), and 2x2 mosaic characters. Unicode also has 3x3 large text (from HP terminals) but font and terminal support is limited.

I assume you mean Braille is the 2x4 set. What range introduces 3x3 codepoints?

Re: 5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens

#42

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 7:06 PM UTC

IvanK_net wrote: post #6

Too bad "tiny screens" pretty much do not exist anymore. Screens with hundreds of pixels on each side are very cheap already. It reminds me people who research "colorizing grayscale photos", which do not exist anymore either (if you want a color photo of someone you met in your life, there probably exists a color photo of that person).

Terminals are tiny screens.

Re: 5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens

#43

Post by tliltocatl » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 7:09 PM UTC

At that point, just go Braille! Amazing work anyway.

Re: 5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens

#44

Post by dorianmariecom » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 7:11 PM UTC

FelipeCortez wrote: post #10

1x5 can also work if you take advantage of subpixel rendering https://www.msarnoff.org/millitext/

"if you look closely at the screen"

Re: 5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens

#45

Post by joefourier » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 7:14 PM UTC

IvanK_net wrote: post #26

joefourier wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too bad "tiny screens" pretty much do not exist anymore. Screens with hundreds of pixels on each side are very cheap already. Find me a 0.66" OLED display for ~$1 that has hundreds of pixels on each side then. > It reminds me people who research "colorizing grayscale photos", which do not exist anymore either (if you want a color photo of someone you met in your life, there probably exists a color photo of that per…

If you know a person who is 70 years old, they were 20 in 1975 - color photos existed back then. Every grayscale photo of someone famous has already been colorized during the past 50 years. If there are only grayscale photos of you, you were probably born before 1900, and all your friends or your children (who might want to colorize your photo) are probably dead, too.

1. Improving the colourisation algorithms has value, it might be that the available colourised photos of celebrities have inaccurate colours or are of poorer quality than say, one done with a diffusion model that can be instructed about the colours of certain objects

2. Don’t forget about B&W films! Getting automatic methods to be consistent over a long length is still not 100% solved. People are very interested in seeing films from WW1 and WW2 in colour, for instance.

3. Plenty of people (myself included) have relatives in their 80s or 90s. Or maybe someone wants to see their ancestors from the 19th century in colour for whatever reason?

Re: 5x5 Pixel font for tiny screens

#46

Post by ludocode » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

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.