"dseg": Original 7-Segment and 14-Segment Fonts (2014)

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

LeoPanthera

66 points

20 comments

keshikan.netTechstory

calmpositive

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FontsLcd DisplaysRetro Tech

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Fonts

Lcd Displays

Retro Tech

The 'DSEG' font package, featuring original 7-segment and 14-segment fonts, is shared, sparking discussion on its design, applications, and related nostalgic tech topics.

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Discussion (20 comments)

Showing 20 comments

ChuckMcM

3 months ago

1 reply

A pretty reasonable way to prototype fixed segment LCD displays. I'm kind of on the fence about the on/off backgrounding stuff.

rgovostes

3 months ago

1 reply

The backgrounds are achieved by having two overlapping <span> elements in different colors. If you use the font standalone, you wouldn't get the two-tone appearance.

ChuckMcM

3 months ago

Ah good to know.

georgestagg

3 months ago

1 reply

If you’re at all interested in segmented displays Posy’s YouTube video about them is pure gold: https://youtu.be/RTB5XhjbgZA

sprash

3 months ago

This rare 22-segment display is the most interesting I've seen so far. It can display the full 7-bit ASCII range including special characters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2cyZoCat_U

edent

3 months ago

1 reply

I don't understand why DSEG14 doesn't have some of the lower-case letters that DSEG7 does. Anyone know why?

duskwuff

3 months ago

DSEG7 uses some lower case forms (e.g. for "b", "n", "t") to avoid letter shapes which are impossible to represent on a 7-segment display (like "N"), or which would be ambiguous (e.g. "B" / "8").

You still can't represent all lowercase letter shapes on a 14-segment display, but you can do all uppercase, so I'm assuming they went with that for consistency.

kazinator

3 months ago

2 replies

I'm not convinced that, in the 14 segment font, we should just give up and accept that lower case "a" and "m" should just be the same as their upper case counterparts:

We can represent a "double storey" a like this:

   ___
      |
   ___|
  |   |
  |___|

It's also unclear why we couldn't have a 14 seg lower case m like this:

   _ _
  | | |
  | | |

Maybe for each character, have a link to a documented rationale.

EDIT: Oh, look at the example font sheet featured in Wikipedia's Fourteen-segment-display page: it has these letters exactly as I say:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen-segment_display#/medi...

degamad

3 months ago

All the letters in DSEG14 are in upper-case, regardless if a lower case variant is possible. It appears to be a stylistic choice.

Only DSEG7 has lower case letters, and that's probably only to distinguish them from other characters or numbers (e.g. h/X, i/1, or o/0).

bmandale

3 months ago

Since you can't communicate case for all characters, trying to communicate it for some characters while failing to differentiate for others would be a bad decision. It's better to accept that the characters do not represent case at all.

Waterluvian

3 months ago

1 reply

I used the 7-segment font for my software-only microwave and really like the result.

https://microwave.pointless.click/

toast0

3 months ago

I use it in my ClockThing [1], which sadly has no pictures on its github, but as an alarm clock with a bitmapped screen, it needs a nice font to give it gravitas.

[1] https://github.com/russor/ClockThing

Gracana

3 months ago

1 reply

I used Omron's K3GN panel meters in a project at work and I had to draw the alphabet in the configuration drawing because it is so unintuitive. It's not a whole lot worse than the one shown in the article, but still... it's pretty rough. I think I prefer numbered parameters like you typically see on VFDs. It's a lot easier to just scroll to P148 or whatever, enter to view/modify, scroll the value, enter to set. Menu trees on seven-segment interfaces are a mistake.

Page six shows the alphabet: https://www.myomron.com/downloads/1.Manuals/Panel%20Indicato...

mrheosuper

3 months ago

I wonder how they display "S5" or "5S"

spicybright

3 months ago

2 replies

What's the purpose of the arrow with line through it for the DSEGWeather?

Well thought out font though, 7segg-chan is cute.

ncruces

3 months ago

Seems to be for weather going from current to future? IDK, TBH.

https://github.com/keshikan/DSEG?tab=readme-ov-file#sample

clickety_clack

3 months ago

Ha, I came to the comments for this. I thought it might be wind, but I don’t know why there would be just a slash.

theamk

3 months ago

If you have actual, physical 14-segment displays, and just need the char->segment mappings, you can find them here:

https://github.com/keshikan/DSEG/blob/master/resources/DSEG1...

rgovostes

3 months ago

Easter(?) egg: The 7SEGG-CHAN font appears in the preview image but is not documented on the page, other than a mathematical reference in the "Misc." section.

mmastrac

3 months ago

I forgot that I had made this until seeing it, but I have a very basic 14-segment font editor for a project I've been meaning to pick up again at some point.

https://github.com/mmastrac/gpsclock

Font JSON file too...

https://github.com/mmastrac/gpsclock/blob/master/fontmaker/f...

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