Replacement 'Terminal' font...

Magnum 'finally' got around to uploading the file, so now you can find a 12 point version of the TERMINAL font that is also compatible with Licida Console. It should be compatible with all non-english characters that the normal terminal font doesn't have (or in some cases has in entirely different places in the list of characters it shows).

Some minor issues:
1. As the description file indicates, the file contains two identical copies, each with a different name. This is due to the fact that the program I used doesn't allow you to delete a font once written to the file. :(

2. It also only supports the 12 point version. This happens to be the size I use in my client and since making the new font required a lot of copy and paste into an empty font file, I didn't bother with other sizes.

3. For some reason Mushclient insists that it is a 6 point font. This is probably another bug in the program I used. Simply directly enter 12 for the size when selecting the font. ;)

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Note (if things go wrong):
Another known issue I ran into is that apparently if a FON type font is damaged, it can cause Windows 9x (and maybe others) to not boot. I don't think this is an issue with this file, since I have been using it for weeks, but it is a nasty bug. Fixing it requires going into DOS mode and copying the existing TERMINAL.FON file over top of the damaged one (i.e. 'copy TERMINAL.FON MODTERM.FON'). This will allow you to reboot and then you can uninstall the font from the Font folder's menus. Trust MS to design an operating system so stupid it can't simply skip loading a font that doesn't work, but blows up instead... lol

As I said though, it was a damaged version of the font that did this, so it shouldn't be a problem. If it doesn't work, please tell me so I can check to make sure I zipped the right version of the file.

Where is this file?

Sorry.. www.magnumsworld.com/muds where everything else of mine is currently hosted. ;)

Okay, somewhat confused here, but what on earth does being 'compatible with Lucida Console' mean? Among other things, Lucida Console is an OpenType font, which obviously this isn't. And you appear to have actually *removed* a number of characters generally found in the Terminal font--all the line drawing and stuff--as well as adding things.

Why not just use something like Lucida Console or Courier New?

Well Neva.. Compatible means that Lucida Console and every other 'modern' font shifts all the box drawing characters and the like into Unicode spaces. Telnet is generally 1 byte = 1 character, therefore if you use the existing Terminal font, most of the foreign characters and the like that are in the 128-255 range, where the Terminal font normally has those special line drawing characters and the like, are in fact missing or in the wrong places. What this means is that if you use the Terminal font on a mud where people have stuff like say a Swedish channel, you see the wrong characters. In order to fix this I rearranged the ones that did appear in the font and recreated the rest, so that when you use ModTerm, it will correctly display german, swedish, etc.

As to why you shouldn't just use Lucida itself or one of the very small number of others... They are designed to be 'printed' characters, not display characters and are therefore intentionally thinner than what you see in the Terminal font. (See the example in the Description for it on the same page as the link for the zip.) The only way to fix this was to set Lucida Console to the 'bold' font, but that still sucked compared to the true Terminal font imho, since it tended to make some characters too think and harder to read, and also has the side effect of disabling the ability to use bold as an attribute for the font (the color would still bold, but some where down the line we may be able to use the 'real' bold attribute in MXP, at which point.... Basically Terminal was designed straight off of the built in display fonts used in graphics cards and is designed for high visibility, Lucida Console, Courier New and the rest are not. Having been unable to find a high visibility fixed width font, that didn't also have 50% of its characters in the 'wrong' order from the perspective of 95% of the other users, I took matters into my own hands and designed one that fixed both problems.

shadow, i tried to go to your website to download the terminal font but the website didn't work.. is there any way you could possibly email it to me? mimadee@gmail.com
thankyou!

You can also try 'Anonymous', it's a very good font meant for screen legibility. I use it for everything that is fixed-width.

http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymous.html

It's free, by the way, even though it's on a font-for-sale site.

Hmm. The "All characters" tab doesn't seem to work for that one, so its impossible to tell what the layout is in the 128-255 range, and that was the major problem with using non-terminal fonts in the first place, the complete inconsistency of that range (or complete lack of it). And especially the near universal deviation from the font set used by text based Telnet systems. Its real hard, unless the client uses character translations into the unicode spaces *and* the font being used supports them, to get the right characters in that range. Sadly, this also means that the "right" ones may not work anyway, if everyone else is uses one of the fonts that has the "wrong" ones. :(

But it does look like a more viewable font, without the flaws that others have when dealing with bold, etc. I also sent Mimadee the one I made. Hopefully I can at some point get in touch with Magnum and have him send the files we originally had posted to Nick or something. :p