''Fixedsys'' is a family of
raster monospaced font
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with variable-width fonts, where the letters and spaci ...
s. The name means ''fixed system'', because its
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s are monospace or fixed-width (although bolded characters are wider than non-bolded, unlike other monospace fonts such as
Courier
A courier is a person or organisation that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...
). It is the oldest font in
Microsoft Windows, and was the system font in
Windows 1.0
Windows 1.0 is the first major release of Microsoft Windows, a family of graphical operating systems for personal computers developed by Microsoft. It was first released to manufacturing in the United States on November 20, 1985, while the Europ ...
and
2.0, where it was simply named "System". For
Windows 3.x Windows 3.x means either of, or all of the following versions of Microsoft Windows:
* Windows 3.0
* Windows 3.1x
Windows NT
* Windows NT 3.x Windows NT 3.x may refer to either of, or all of the following versions of Microsoft Windows:
* Windows ...
, the system font was changed to a
proportional sans-serif font named
System, but Fixedsys remained the default font in
Notepad
A notebook (also known as a notepad, writing pad, drawing pad, or legal pad) is a book or stack of paper pages that are often ruled and used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling or other writing, drawing, or scrapbooking.
History ...
.
Fixedsys fonts family contains fonts encoded in several
Windows code pages, with multiple resolutions of the font for each code page. Fixedsys fonts of different code pages have different point sizes.
The glyphs for the upper areas of each one appear to be drawn separately, not taken from a single master set, as there are visible differences in the appearance of various visually similar characters that are shared between the code pages.
Though Fixedsys is a sans-serif font, it is vaguely similar in appearance to the
hardware text mode font of most
IBM-compatible PCs, though not as similar as certain sizes of
Terminal fonts seen in Windows.
In
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...
,
98, and
Windows Me
Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Win ...
, Fixedsys remains as the default font for Notepad. This font was superseded by
Lucida Console
Lucida (pronunciation: ) is an extended family of related typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes and released from 1984 onwards. The family is intended to be extremely legible when printed at small size or displayed on a low-reso ...
in Notepad for later versions of Windows. In
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...
, this default font cannot be changed. Fixedsys of other code pages can be selected by specifying script settings in font selection dialogue, but not font of all code pages can be chosen.
Due to its clean style and easy readability, it has enjoyed some popularity with the programming community, even giving rise to an imitation font — Fixedsys Excelsior — which, based on the original Fixedsys typeface, also includes a large number of
Unicode script ranges.
[ The current home of the font is http://github.com/kika/fixedsys]
There is a certain amount of similarity between Fixedsys and
Chicago, the default system typeface on the
Apple Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
between 1984 and 1997. The key difference is that Chicago is a proportional typeface while Fixedsys is monospaced. A smaller CGA version of this font also exists, with some characters bearing a resemblance to the IBM 8x8 CGA font. The EGA version is nearly identical to the CGA version, only in differing in a small number of characters.
According to a string embedded in the .FON file (which is viewable with a hex editor or with a typeface editor such as Fony), this font was designed in 1984 by Bitstream Inc., but the high resolution 8514/a version (used in modern versions of Windows operating system as the high DPI variant, which is larger and looks different from the VGA version) was designed in 1987 by Microsoft Corporation.
Example
The following is the
lorem ipsum as it appears here written in Fixedsys.
:
See also
*
System (typeface)
*
Terminal (typeface)
*
MS Sans Serif
References
{{Microsoft Windows typefaces
Typefaces and fonts introduced in the 1980s
Monospaced typefaces
Windows XP typefaces
Raster typefaces