Decorative experimental letters drawn around XX pattern.

Clone of Dot24Pin Sans Outline.

Still dreaming of 24-pin printers...

This original 24×15 typeface is designed around the limitations presented by the near letter quality (NLQ) output of dot matrix printers (DMPs) during the '80s & '90s.  Partially inspired by J. David Sapir's DOS font design program, LQMATRIX, it could have easily been created using that program back in the day.

(The "smart phone"-looking character in the À position is simply a placeholder, used as a quick reference to set vertical height lines while FontStructing.)

Still dreaming of 24-pin printers...

This original 24×15 typeface is designed around the limitations presented by the near letter quality (NLQ) output of dot matrix printers (DMPs) during the '80s & '90s.  Partially inspired by J. David Sapir's DOS font design program, LQMATRIX, it could have easily been created using that program back in the day.

(The "smart phone"-looking character in the À position is simply a placeholder, used as a quick reference to set vertical height lines while FontStructing.)

This font is a recreation of Richard Wisan's "ELITEQ.LQN" font file (c) 1990 for use with the program LQMATRIX.  From Mr. Wisan's comment in the LQMATRIX documentation file: "ELITEQ.LQN: resembles Epson's resident Roman font, but slightly reduced to suit elite spacing."

LQMATRIX was a font design program for use with Epson LQ [Letter Quality] 24-pin dot matrix printers and compatibles.  Created by noted linguist, anthropologist, and photographer J. David Sapir, the program had its beginnings in 1985 and was published by Jimmy Paris Software; the last known version that I have been able to find is version 4.44 (1991).  Mr. Sapir included font set submissions from LQMATRIX users in some of the later updates; my version includes Mr. Wisan's file.  A screenshot of the program is included in the comments section below.

While the graphics mode of dot matrix printers could print rather complex pictures, it remained extremely slow for large amounts of specialized text.  By uploading an LQMATRIX font file into the printer's RAM, the temporary font could be used interchangeablely with the printer's resident ROM fonts.  The result was a much faster print speed with little sacrifice in quality -- plus, one could design their own special glyphs or characters to suit their needs!

This was accomplish by a sophisticated design program included with LQMATRIX, whereby users could create and save characters or symbols on a 24 vertical by 15 horizontal grid for the ASCII locations 032–126 (although 001-127 were permitted).  One could even place dots in the 14 half-positions along the horizontal.

I have cleaned-up some of the curvatures and harmonized a number of glyphs (along with outright modification of a few, like W and w), yet they still adhere to the same 24 x 15 grid.  The original designs can be found beginning in the "More Latin" section.  Because the characters for "left single quotation mark" and "right single quotation mark" were not present in DOS, I have "created" them here for sake of completion.