Fonts

Almost Swiss is an OS/2 bitmap font which was inspired by the 8 and 10 point sizes of the system font "Helv" (also called "Swiss") – which is in turn a loosely adapted bitmap stand-in for Helvetica. The problem with Helv is that larger point sizes use very dark, heavy strokes, giving the font a bold appearance which is not always suitable. I therefore created Almost Swiss to fulfill a desire for larger sizes in the lighter Helv/Swiss style.

Almost Swiss is designed to be suitable for program screen text at higher resolutions. It is particularly well-suited for use in lists, tables, and container controls.

Note: Almost Swiss is an OS/2 screen font and is not supported on other platforms, or for printer output.

As of version 1.1, all supported character sets are now fully harmonized among the various sizes and resolutions. Design improvements have also been made to numerous characters, and support for new character sets has been added.

This version also introduces an extra weight, "Almost Swiss Medium", at the 11 and 12 point sizes (120dpi only). This is slightly darker than the standard (a.k.a. light) weight, and is provided mainly for the benefit of people who run very high resolution screens and want something that looks a bit more substantial.

Screenshots

• Almost Swiss (standard weight) at its its various point sizes and resolutions.

• Almost Swiss Medium at its its various point sizes and resolutions.

Supported Characters

Almost Swiss supports the following character sets (grouped according to the OS/2 Extended Universal Glyph List):

• Latin-1
• Latin-2
• PC Extended
• Cyrillic
• Baltic
• Hebrew (including cantillation marks and Yiddish)
• Greek
• Arabic (new in v1.1)
• Halfwidth Katakana
• Thai (redesigned for v1.1)

Files

almswiss-1_1.wpi	Almost Swiss version 1.1 as an installable WPI package (requires WarpIN 1.0.15 or later).
almswiss-1_1.zip	Almost Swiss version 1.1 distributed as a ZIP archive.

Almost VIO is an OS/2 bitmap font which was inspired by the 7x15 (6-point) "System VIO" terminal font. While I happen to like 7x15 System VIO as an editor font, all of System VIO's larger sizes are dramatically different in style and don't work nearly so well. Consequently, Almost VIO is designed to offer larger font sizes in the general style of 7x15 System VIO.

Almost VIO is primarily designed for use as a progamming and text editor font at higher screen resolutions.

Note: Almost VIO is an OS/2 screen font and is not supported on other platforms, or for printer output.

Version 1.1 adds a 13 point size for 120dpi resolutions, and all supported character sets are now fully harmonized among the various sizes and resolutions. Design improvements have also been made to numerous characters.

This version also introduces an extra weight, "Almost VIO Medium", at the 13 point size (120dpi only). This is slightly darker than the standard (a.k.a. light) weight, and is provided mainly for the benefit of people who run very high resolution screens and want something that looks a bit more substantial.

Screenshots

• Almost VIO (standard weight) at its its various point sizes and resolutions.

• Almost VIO Medium (13 point, 120dpi).

Supported Characters

Almost VIO supports the following character sets (grouped according to the OS/2 Extended Universal Glyph List):

• Latin-1
• Latin-2
• PC Extended
• Cyrillic
• Baltic
• Hebrew (including cantillation marks and Yiddish)
• Greek
• Halfwidth Katakana

Thanks go to Stan Goodman for providing advice on the Hebrew characters.

Files

almvio-1_1.wpi	Almost VIO version 1.1 as an installable WPI package (requires WarpIN 1.0.15 or later).
almvio-1_1.zip	Almost VIO version 1.1 distributed as a ZIP archive.

This is an unofficial extension to the System Proportional OS/2 bitmap font, providing several larger sizes beyond the standard ones provided by DSPRES.DLL (when using a 120dpi screen resolution).

This is primarily intended for use on very high-resolution screens, or for people with impaired vision.

These fonts are available under two different style (face) names:

• The 16, 18, and 22 pt sizes are available as "System Proportional Non-ISO" (OS/2 already includes 10 and 12 pt sizes under this style name). The term "Non-ISO", for the record, indicates that the font has not been certified as compliant with ISO Standard 9241 part 3 (apparently the 'regular' versions of IBM's System Proportional are certified).
• The 24 pt size is a bit different. Because of the sheer size of the glyphs at this size, having all possible characters in the same font would exceed OS/2's 64KB limit for individual resources. Instead, the font is split up into different versions by character set.
  • "System Proportional Large LAT" includes all extended Latin characters.
  • "System Proportional Large CYR" includes Cyrillic support.
  • "System Proportional Large HEB" includes Hebrew support.
  • "System Proportional Large GRK" includes Greek support.

  All of the above support the basic ASCII character set. However, they do not contain box drawing symbols and shapes, due to size constraints.

• An image of System Proportional Non-ISO with the new sizes installed.
• An image of System Proportional Large LAT.

All of the new sizes are included in the same file, SYSPRO.FON.

Note: System Proportional is an OS/2 screen font and is not supported on other platforms, or for printer output.

Supported Characters

The extended sizes of System Proportional Non-ISO support the following EUGL characters sets: Latin-1, Latin-2, PC Extended, Cyrillic, Baltic, Hebrew, and Greek. (This corresponds to EUGL codepoints 1-646.)

System Proportional Large LAT supports all letter characters from Latin-1, Latin-2, and Baltic, plus various additional symbols.

System Proportional Large CYR supports the letter characters from Latin-1, and Cyrillic.

System Proportional Large HEB supports the letter characters from Latin-1, and Hebrew.

System Proportional Large GRK supports the letter characters from Latin-1, and Greek.

Files

syspro_es_110.wpi	System Proportional extended sizes version 1.10 as an installable WPI package (requires WarpIN 1.0.15 or later).
syspro_es_110.zip	System Proportional extended sizes version 1.10 as a ZIP archive.

This is an unofficial extension to the "WarpSans" OS/2 bitmap font which adds a number of larger sizes.

These larger sizes are useful when using very high-resolution screens (especially on some notebook computers) where the normal WarpSans font may be too small for comfortable reading.

To take full advantage of the larger WarpSans sizes, you can set the desktop scheme to use one of them for icon text, menu text, and window text. As a bonus, doing this enables an interesting undocumented WPS feature: when the window text setting is set to 10 point or higher, all of the standard WPS properties notebooks will automatically change to the closest matching WarpSans as well. (This does not apply to new pages inserted by various WPS extensions, unless they are also designed to take advantage of this feature.)

Note that the 22 pt size is essentially an enlarged version of the 11 pt, and is therefore slightly blockier in appearance than the others. (However, if you have a high enough screen resolution to warrant using the 22 pt size, this probably won't be all that noticeable.)

• An image of WarpSans (normal weight) with the new sizes installed.
• An image of WarpSans Bold with the new sizes installed.

All of the new sizes are included in the same file, WARPSANS.FON.

Note: WarpSans is an OS/2 screen font and is not supported on other platforms, or for printer output.

Supported Characters

All extended sizes of WarpSans and WarpSans Bold support the following EUGL characters sets: Latin-1, Latin-2, PC Extended, Baltic, and Cyrillic.

The 10, and 11 pt sizes additionally support Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Halfwidth Katakana and Hangul.

The 12, 14 and 18 pt sizes support Hebrew, Greek and Arabic, although in some cases the glyphs have slightly reduced quality.

Files

warpsans_es_130.wpi	WarpSans extended sizes version 1.30 as an installable WPI package (requires WarpIN 1.0.15 or later).
warpsans_es_130.zip	WarpSans extended sizes version 1.30 as a ZIP archive.