Gregory's ServerI've been down a rabbit hole the last couple of weeks with Apple's ancient Font Editor 2.0 (1984), the first font editor I ever used on a Mac. This is the pre-PostScript era of bitmap fonts like Chicago, Geneva, and New York. I wound up making a user guide and a video demo, which you can watch here: https://youtu.be/rOwzfaTU0XA?si=QDwZDFvE8pl9-9Kq
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12 comments
 @marksimonson Mark, this is amazing. But i only boost posts with alt text on their images (aka "image description). Can you please take the time to write some? Should be able to edit the post. Ta. @marksimonson Boosted! i love this, i recently made a HyperCard stack (my first!) demoing some of Apple's builtin fonts. @marksimonson it was. i, like the must of the rest of the world and apple, sadly neglected it at the time (i didn't have a Mac, but i used them on and off at uni). Now it's a faded but tantalising glimpse of what the web could have become. A true end-user programming networked programming system (the term "end-user programming" comes from Bonnie Nardi's excellent book "A Small Matter of Programming"). @marksimonson So great, thank you for the reminder. Forgive me if you mention it in your video, since I haven't had time to watch it yet, but I was also fond of the mini version built directly into ResEdit: @benfry I don't mention it, although I do use ResEdit v. 0.5 in the video. There was a super early version of its font editing capability in it, but it was even less capable than Font Editor at that point. ResEdit is probably the reason they stopped developing Font Editor.  @marksimonson What a wonderful video clearly showcasing the experience of tasks in 1980s on the Mac along with several gotchas. I faintly recall using ResEdit to change the Finder’s “Cancel/Okay” to “Nah/Sure” system wide because why not, but I my may be misremembering. Good times. @Luke Yeah, ResEdit was amazing. The idea you could crack open an app or even the System file and change things was really cool. @marksimonson incredibly so. I must’ve messed with that computer shop demo unit forever without spending a dime. I bet they had to reinstall things because of me. 🙄  @marksimonson @Luke This was a great part of the experience in the early Mac days. And yes editing fonts by bitmap was so immensely satisfying and delightful |
@marksimonson @nicksherman I thought I had memory holed working in the old, old Mac System but watching this brought everything back. So much fun!