Download virtue-211.hqx (195,219 KB)
From: wamozart@teleport.com
Subject: Virtue 2.11 TrueType font--a replacement for Charcoal
Virtue
version 2.1, March 21, 1998
Copyright ©1997-1998 Marty P. Pfeiffer at Scooter Graphics.
Price: Free!
Virtue is my improvement of Apple Computer's "Charcoal" font appearing in
Mac OS 8.
About Virtue:
There is a lot of controversy about Charcoal, and honestly, I think that
most of it is unjustified. Basically, a lot of people did not want this
font to appear in the Mac OS 8. I think that this feeling is based on a
"reverse-engineered" font developed by Greg Landweber for his Aaron
extension and Kaleidoscope control panel. Greg built his font from
looking at various screenshots and did a good job at making a very
complete font. However, the spacing information and special characters
characters seemed a little off to me. It seems that Apple couldn't decide
whether Charcoal should have two pixels between the letters or just one.
This leads to a cramped appearance on screen.
So here's what I did: basically, I took his work and tried to space it
how I would if I was making Apple's next font. I studied the "Chicago"
system font and and used it as a template for my font. After about 2
hours of tinkering, I had a bitmap font that looked really good as a
replacement font for Kaleidoscope. About a week later, after tinkering
some more, I made even more improvements.
And then I decided to create a regular weight of Virtue to go along with
it. I tried to carry the unique features of Virtue into Virtue Light.
It's currently just a 12 point bitmap font, but I thought that it might
be useful for those of us who have smaller screens or are just tired of
looking at bold fonts all day. I'd love to hear any comments you may have
about Virtue-Light.