Cream 10pt
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This is the 10pt display 'raster' version of the "Cream" font as used on the Xerox Alto (particularly in Smalltalk76 and its predecessors; a variant of it may still be used in Smalltalk80). The vector version used on very early xerox printers and print servers is much higher resolution. This is the font that directly inspired the Apple "Venice" font, and also appeared as the System/UI font (instead of Chicago) on early Mac prototypes.
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Info:Created on 25th November 2019. Last edited on 24th December 2019.
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12 Comments
This is really awesome, thanks! Been looking all over the internet for this! You mention the 'vector version', where can it be found?
@metaljeyes - Not to speak for @Lord Nightmare, but I believe the reference to 'vector version' means 'displayed on original Xerox Alto hardware' and not an actual PC font file...
The vector version is embedded into the two xerox alto disk packs for the 'spruce' imager for Dover or Sequoia printers. Spruce is effectively a partially-software raster renderer (using an Orbit add-on set of cards for the Alto) for very early laser printers. Some later Xerox laser printers may have had the vector font data loaded directly onto the printer itself, so didn't need a dedicated network-linked alto to directly render it. The actual source files for these embedded fonts I'm not entirely sure where to find, but may exist on the "Indigo" xerox alto archives at the computer history museum, which is accessible online.
Here's an example of the vector font version of Cream, rasterized by spruce running on a networked xerox alto using the 'ContrAlto' emulator. This font was usually used by Smalltalk-76 or Smalltalk-80 programs on the Xerox Alto, and printouts of said programs.
The unusual shape of the s, S and B glyphs (and some others) appears to be intentional (as it is consistent between the raster and vector versions of the font), perhaps to make characters less ambiguous on printouts and on-screen on the Alto
So, I searched in the CHM's archive of Xerox Parc and found this list of Alto front in the Indigo folder: https://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org/Indigo/AltoFonts/.index.html
We can find the Cream font with two sizes 10 and 12. They are fonts according to the Section 3 on File Naming Convention of the document "Font Representation and Format" (http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/xerox/alto/printing/Font_Representations_and_Formats_Mar77.pdf).
Any idea how to read them?
The .al font format is described (as a BCPL struct) in the very same pdf file you linked. I have a chunk of c code I wrote back in 2019 which will display the characters to screen from any .al file, although interestingly even xerox screwed up a few of the font headers and character widths, requiring some manual heuristics to make them display properly by the viewer. (these might rely on undefined behavior of the xerox alto microcode to display properly!)
Interesting! Do you mind sharing your code please?
Thanks
I love this font, but it seems to break on exporting to PDF on anything other than Adobe's exporter. I've tested in Affinity Publisher, Typst, LibreOffice, GIMP and Scribus. In each case, kerning seems to be either broken or absent when exported to PDF. The issue doesn't present itself in the working document, only when exported.
@Ophiolith - Are you using the OpenType or the TrueType? The OpenType downloads here on FontStruct seem to have more problems than TTF.
@Ophiolith - After cloning this font, the problem appears to be that the font widths are not fixed, they are variable -- which can lead to glyphs "running into each other" like this, especially pixel fonts...
@Goatmeal - Thank you for the advice, uninstalling the .otf and reinstalling as .ttf fixed the issue entirely! Much obliged!
@Ophiolith - Glad one of my suggestions worked for you! :^) Nice to see that the variable width mentioned in the 2nd message didn't affect the resulting TTF font.
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