Wow, I like the idea and how this was used as a photography arts project.
Also, I think this idea could be transferred to other materials, such as iron, or ice.
Forgeties79 1 days ago [-]
That’s really neat. Interesting watching them grow sideways
Plus one for having all the keys in the correct locations!
How does it feel and sound?
yifanl 1 days ago [-]
It's quite hollow and plasticky on the inside. This is not a bad thing nor a mark of cheapness, but it sounds very roomy and echo-y for a keyboard, so if you like the sound of the clacking on a keyboard, it's quite amplified by the board.
I wasn't around to use an actual C64 to compare the sound against that, but I suspect it's an intentional choice as a retro keyboard to mark itself apart from the foamy modern keyboards that tend to dampen the keyboard.
whilenot-dev 1 days ago [-]
Had one too, it's rather on the loud side of clicking and the build quality is great.
reaperducer 1 days ago [-]
Plus one for having all the keys in the correct locations!
The S is misproportioned. M should have the middle go all the way to the baseline. The middle stems on 3 and 4 are too long and too short. The punctuation is all different sizes. This is just me glancing at the normalized comparison image. It's really obvious.
petecooper 1 days ago [-]
>It's really obvious.
I'm not disputing that -- the approach of the issue OP was what irked me.
ryandrake 1 days ago [-]
Yea, it's as if the OP went out of his way to make the feedback both insulting and non-constructive / unhelpful.
Imagine being at work in a professional job and filing a bug like that to a coworker. Totally inappropriate.
cmrdporcupine 1 days ago [-]
Some people get this way the moment they get a whiff you've touched an LLM. Like, beyond rude.
Frankly, it's usually just gatekeeping (or just being threatened) hiding behind some moral system they just assume you should share with them.
kalleboo 1 days ago [-]
It's an asshole issue, but at the same time the AI that did the work isn't going to have it's feelings hurt.
dylan604 1 days ago [-]
Why would keys with full words like shift/return/etc be useful in creating a font. Basic comprehension skills are at a loss for this user. The issue comment should have ended with the first sentence. However, could the keys with full words have been used to provide clues on kerning or other spacing to use when building the font?
ricardobeat 1 days ago [-]
What a confused comment.
"There is no RETURN, SHIFT...", "Too many F keys". They are confusing a typeface with trying to replicate the keyboard keys.
The arrows are not the cursor keys, but based on the ESC key.
They are right about the @ character though, it looks quite wonky.
gwbas1c 1 days ago [-]
The special characters / punctuation are not aligned. The !#$% characters either float too high or need to be a little bigger.
(Yes, I copied the image from the page into Paint and drew a line)
Oarch 1 days ago [-]
Oh gosh, this is really rather nice.
unD 1 days ago [-]
I haven't read "Press play on tape" in decades!
Sharlin 1 days ago [-]
There was a band named PRESS PLAY ON TAPE (stylized in all caps, of course) playing SID covers and similar stuff that I saw performing a couple of times back in the 00s/10s. Actually, looks like they’re still active at least to some extent: https://pressplayontape.com/
1 days ago [-]
Loughla 1 days ago [-]
It really is though. Very clean.
epcoa 1 days ago [-]
More AI slop.
dar5hak 1 days ago [-]
If creatively expanded to more characters, this would make a pretty nice coding font.
pinkmuffinere 1 days ago [-]
These are absolutely beautiful! However, I think I often feel that when looking at fonts somebody has shared online, which makes me wonder how much I love the font, vs how much I just like the design aesthetic of people that craft fonts.
Also I understand why only the uppercase version is given, but it does pretty much preclude me from using the font, since 95% of the letters I type are lowercase
Nice. It never really occurred to me how different these are from 64C keycaps. I guess through our affinity for retro look, the original typeface ended up feeling more modern/current than the newer one.
judetechdevs 1 days ago [-]
Same, the old one somehow looks newer lol
Sharlin 2 days ago [-]
It’s a very pleasant looking humanist sans. Now I’m wondering about the story of the original typeface – were the glyphs specifically designed for the keyboard? Seems more likely that some existing font was used.
The G is different (look at the lower right corner), the 0 (zero) has a slash which looks custom, and the Q is very different (it looks like a letter O with a piece of another O added for the tail).
And yes, since it's the standard comment about fonts, this is a commercial font that costs an arm and a leg.
judetechdevs 1 days ago [-]
It looks too nice to have been drawn just for keycaps :(
mxfh 1 days ago [-]
Kind of ambivalent state of things, a research thread to solve that provenance
issue to some degree of certainty is always only one prompt away too.
sombragris 1 days ago [-]
Looks nice. The C-64 had an excellent keyboard typeface
I think peak keycaps font were the ones used in the Epson QX-10, Epson HX-20, Tandy 100, and the common C-64.
mark-r 1 days ago [-]
What, no Euro key?
(Yes, I realize the € symbol didn't exist until 1996)
crustyoldhuman 1 days ago [-]
thank you so much for this! love how this looks, it's such a clean typeface
EDIT: I kept getting problems downloading it--errors acting like nothing was there. After clicking around on the download links a few times, it eventually made it to my downloads and I got the file. Not sure what's going on there, but just a heads up for anyone else
otikik 1 days ago [-]
"!" is like half of the size of "?". Even if that's faithful to the keyboard, it is very annoying.
BearOso 1 days ago [-]
It's not faithful. The AI took the original image and assumed the ! was supposed to be elevated like that. This project is low-effort AI generated.
Edit to add: This GitHub user has a over a hundred repositories full of random slop. It's clearly being used to generate activity for a resume or something.
cringleycringe 1 days ago [-]
I love AI!
exceptione 1 days ago [-]
A weird thing: the exclamation mark `!` seems to be elevated from the baseline, judging from the specimen.
petesergeant 2 days ago [-]
The download links seem broken, does anyone have the TTF?
The readme is just a text file, the files are there, it doesn't take a genius to find them.
"How do I download the TTF". Well, use your brain.
keyle 20 hours ago [-]
Thanks _joel, useful as always.
madaxe_again 1 days ago [-]
That isn’t the repo. That’s a readme. It’s there in the repo, it’s just fine.
bodge5000 1 days ago [-]
To be fair they are correct, there's a "Download TTF" which seems to be at least partially broken (cmd-click works fine, but just clicking it takes you to an error page), but you are right, the files are there in the repo and download fine.
The readme isn't the first place I'd look for a download link either, but it is there
queenkjuul 1 days ago [-]
This is sweet but i could really live without the Claude commentary in the preview page
amai 1 days ago [-]
No umlauts?
appstorelottery 1 days ago [-]
Very nice - thank you!
amelius 1 days ago [-]
Apple ][ please.
(Actually, I think the Commodore had a better font)
taylormichelleb 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
hackerbluedev 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 22:34:05 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://aresluna.org/the-hardest-working-font-in-manhattan/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49201953
https://bjoernkarmann.dk/project/occlution_grotesque
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/1pjw7q6/t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgramma_(typeface)
There's an open source font QTEurotype that does an excellent approximation that I've been using in a recent project
How does it feel and sound?
I wasn't around to use an actual C64 to compare the sound against that, but I suspect it's an intentional choice as a retro keyboard to mark itself apart from the foamy modern keyboards that tend to dampen the keyboard.
There's nothing correct about a "WIN" key.
This saddens me, frankly.
I'm not disputing that -- the approach of the issue OP was what irked me.
Imagine being at work in a professional job and filing a bug like that to a coworker. Totally inappropriate.
Frankly, it's usually just gatekeeping (or just being threatened) hiding behind some moral system they just assume you should share with them.
"There is no RETURN, SHIFT...", "Too many F keys". They are confusing a typeface with trying to replicate the keyboard keys.
The arrows are not the cursor keys, but based on the ESC key.
They are right about the @ character though, it looks quite wonky.
(Yes, I copied the image from the page into Paint and drew a line)
Also I understand why only the uppercase version is given, but it does pretty much preclude me from using the font, since 95% of the letters I type are lowercase
https://www.dafont.com/zx-spectrum.font
The G is different (look at the lower right corner), the 0 (zero) has a slash which looks custom, and the Q is very different (it looks like a letter O with a piece of another O added for the tail).
And yes, since it's the standard comment about fonts, this is a commercial font that costs an arm and a leg.
I think peak keycaps font were the ones used in the Epson QX-10, Epson HX-20, Tandy 100, and the common C-64.
(Yes, I realize the € symbol didn't exist until 1996)
EDIT: I kept getting problems downloading it--errors acting like nothing was there. After clicking around on the download links a few times, it eventually made it to my downloads and I got the file. Not sure what's going on there, but just a heads up for anyone else
Edit to add: This GitHub user has a over a hundred repositories full of random slop. It's clearly being used to generate activity for a resume or something.
"How do I download the TTF". Well, use your brain.
The readme isn't the first place I'd look for a download link either, but it is there
(Actually, I think the Commodore had a better font)