...eventually every possibility will be exhausted.

This might take a while. There are 22,300,745,198,530,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations of black and white pixels in a 12x12 grid (2 to the power of 144). Admittedly, not all of these combinations are useful (relatively few even), but it does illustrate that there is plenty of room for variation, even in a relatively small area.

Remember, too, that there are hundreds of characters in each font and some characters offer more room for variation than others (e.g., lowercase g vs. a period).

By the way, that number with all the zeros isn't totally accurate after the 6. It looks like 2^144 goes beyond the level of accuracy Excel can handle. The number should be 22,300,745,198,530,623,141,535,718,272,648,361,505,980,416. (Hooray for Python!)

Enlightening, thanks Mark. By the way, how did you figure the possibilities (what's the formula?)

> all of the sudden I've become an enthralled,
> obsessed, captive audience to the concept of
> small-scale pixel fonts

It's the purity. Outline fonts can never have that.

In terms of uniqueness, Mark's scary numbers notwithstanding, there is in fact a very real practical barrier of permutations at smaller sizes. That's why I try to only make grayscale pixelfonts now - calculate that, Mark! ;-)

BTW:
http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/4100/32187.html

> .... it's a totally different font then, right?

Who knows, I guess. That "totally" probably wouldn't hold up though.

hhp

It's pretty simple: A 12 x 12 grid of black and white pixels is essentially a 144 digit binary number. To figure out how many different combinations there are, here is the formula:

In terms of uniqueness, Mark's scary numbers notwithstanding, there is in fact a very real practical barrier of permutations at smaller sizes. That's why I try to only make grayscale pixelfonts now - calculate that, Mark! ;-)

Well, for a 12 x 12 grid with 16 levels of gray, that would be 247,330,401,473,104,534,060,502,521,019,647,190,035,131,349,101,211,839,914,063,056,092,897,225,106,531,867,170,316,401,061,243,044,989,597,671,426,016,139,339,351,365,034,306,751,209,967,546,155,101,893,167,916,606,772,148,699,136 combinations.

If you step that up to 256 levels of gray you get 61,172,327,492,847,069,472,032,393,719,205,726,809,135,813,743,440,799,050,195,397,570,919,697,796,091,958,321,786,863,938,157,971,792,315,844,506,873,509,046,544,459,008,355,036,150,650,333,616,890,210,625,686,064,472,971,480,622,053,109,783,197,015,954,399,612,052,812,141,827,922,088,117,778,074,833,698,589,048,132,156,300,022,844,899,841,969,874,763,871,624,802,603,515,651,998,113,045,708,569,927,237,462,546,233,168,834,543,264,678,118,409,417,047,146,496 combinations. Personally, I think this is overkill and that 16 is plenty. :-)

> that would be ....

Dayng.

Actually, although it's hard to need more than a half-dozen shades, if they're chosen from a gradation of 16 (actually 17, believe it or not) it helps a lot.

hhp

Okay Hrant, thanks for the link (and the link inside it). I may be getting far ahead of myself, but, let me be humble and admit that I know absolutely nothing about grayscale bitmaps and ask you--will you elaborate further on the process? Please.

And I think you're right, I think it's the purity.

> will you elaborate further on the process?

Where a b&w pixelfont places a block (as an outline) where the "virtual pixel" is for a given PPEM size, a grayscale pixelfont fills that block only partially, to get a shade when it's rendered. However, the tricky part is getting consistent rendering accross platforms and apps, since for example Photoshop and Flash interpret the degree and type of filling differently...

hhp

hey hrant, could you show us a screengrab of such a funky outline?

cheers

geraint

Here's what the cleaned-up cap "A" from Mana-16R looks like:



The converter's raw results are a lot messier in that it doesn't implement symmetry and sometimes generates stray subpixels. But that's really OK, because the only way to make these outlines usable large is to compromise the exacting screen rendering anyway. Unless some people think this is the Bell Centennial of the 21st century, baby.

hhp

crazy;)