The reason why I am working on making the Chortle bitmap is because Linux does not have a really readable porportional bitmap font. The way I have been working around this is by enabling hinting in Freetype, and using Microsoft's Verdana font. This is obviously not a long-term solution; Verdana is a proprietary font that one can not just add new glyphs to.
So, I'm trying to make a screen font that is as readable as Verdana, while preserving the metrics of the Bitstream Charter/Charis font that I used for my printed documents. It's a lot of work; more work than I envisioned when I started this font. Last night, I decided that, at the larger 17 pixel size, the Chortle bitmap is more readable if I put more space between letters:
This seems to be more readable than the older version of the 17 pixel font:
The update, as always, is available at http://www.samiam.org/Chortle
I also want to use this font in a version of Linux for older computers.
