Font specifications

• There's a bit of a specifications guide from 1992 here.
• Mode Nine looks like a pretty true teletext font.
• A BBC Micro font.
  

A modern teletext font

If teletext had, or should it, live on after the switchoff, in order to fit in with the plethora of new technologies available on the Internet and elsewhere it would need to develop. It would be interesting to see how far I could take this whilst remaining faithful to the 80 x 69 pixel canvas. This could mean changes to:

• Colour palette, increase from 8 to 16, 24, or even higher.
• Change in character set. This might include:
• Addition of extended Unicode symbols such as @, (, | etc.
• Addition of new symbols for the teletext format
• Addition of emoticons.
• (Basically a whole new character set.)
  
• Option to redefine the font. Eg. Courier, Fixedsys
  

Peecol - design with restriction

One relatively recent example that could be compared to the concept of teletext art is Eboy's Peecol. The equivalent font set can be seen as a webbificated, modernised version of teletext design. Taking the idea of pixel by pixel design on a small, monotone canvas, each letter corresponds to a 'body part', upper half or lower half. The parts can be combined in any way possible to form whole characters. In particular, the ones from the 'play' variation of the typeface can be likened to pixellated video game characters in their minimal, restricted approach.

It is very similar to Eboy's other work, which generally centres around the concept of low-resolution art; grid art; pixel art. Summarised, the canvas used is a 'shrunk down' version of the one used on teletext.

Peecol toys

Teletext and the Internet revisited

Reading some messages on the teletext mailing list today and a particularly popular discussion on the analogue switch off. One topic that has arisen is the emulation of the teletext medium on the Internet. This would perhaps not be carried via regular HTTP, rather a new protocol within TCP.

A much easier way of achieving this would be to create a piece of software that works within, or similar to, hypertext browsers and to perhaps register a set of domains (.tx, .ttx?) in which these would be broadcasts. Using the software, which would be free source and similar to existing Internet browsers, users could create pages and upload them to the Internet, thus providing a network of teletext pages for the Internet generation.

Maybe the software could be embedded within a single website, much like Wikipedia. People would be provided with a template with which to create, learn some simple formatting and create pages with the interactive editor on-screen. Could the wiki possibly be modified for a teletext format?

A while back (few years ago now) I created a skin for Uncyclopedia, a site which uses the wiki format. This is shown to the right. Using a few templates and things, it is easy to see how this could possibly be replicated and reproduced.

An interesting concept for a project perhaps? Would perhaps be out of my timescale, not least because I wouldn't know how to code one with my limited knowledge of php and all that programming gubbins.

Pixel is power?

There are also some interesting points for my own project. Somebody mentioned creating a specific font set, like WST, for the 'new' format:

Creating my own teletext font may be a helpful element in making a set of teletext pages to present the information in this weblog. And, in some small way, I could actually contribute to the afterlife of teletext in its conversion to the internet.