Replace ax86-terminus with consoleet-terminus

[jengelh]

The ax86 version has all weird orientations of outline segments that hardly line up with the pixel grid, get antialiased, and are anything but sharp.

(cf. image at https://inai.de/projects/consoleet/terminus )

[braver]

There is also a newer version of the "ax86" implementation: https://www.ax86.net/2023/04/28/terminus-ttf-4493-released/

Since neither is the original Terminushttps://sourceforge.net/projects/terminus-font/, I think we should perhaps have both and mention the original in the readme. We increasingly list multiple interpretations of a single design, and here I think it's warranted. Especially since Consoleet also has a "smooth" version I'd like to list as well.

So, thanks for bringing this up, I'll take it from here :)

[jengelh]

Webpage says:

almost fully match the bitmaps

(emphasis mine). I had a look at their new version. It's still bad, just different. I have updated the critique section on my page with the gritty details. Please everyone, let's just avoid the ax86 versions. I can add slant to consoleet-terminus if there's really a desire for it.

[braver]

Please everyone, let's just avoid the ax86 versions

As is typical for these vectorizations you can get close but it's never quite the original. And like with Courier or Incosolata I'm now leaning more towards a more completionist approach, featuring all implementations (assuming they're at least somewhat serious) and let users figure out what they feel is important about one implementation or another.

By the way, is the smooth version supposed to be available only in bold?

[jengelh]

As is typical for these vectorizations you can get close but it's never quite the original

Eh? There are plenty of fonts which render pixel-perfect at certain sizes. Try the "IBM VGA 9x16" from programmingfonts.org. The sweet spot is 16px (and integral multiples). I would say that's quite the original.

ax86-terminus-4.49.3 only achieves perfect rendering at 1000px because of all the offcenter points. It does not have to be that way; consoleet_ter32{nv,bv} has the sweet spot at 32px and multiples.

By the way, is the smooth version supposed to be available only in bold?

There is not enough information in fontfaces with "thin" strokes. To meaningfully produce smooth diagonals, vfontas-N2 needs the glyph to have a stem thickness of >=2px. The first non-bold original that fulfills this criteria is ter_128n.psfu, so yes, there is an intentional shortage of 'nv' suffixed files.

18:53 f3:../fonts/truetype $ ls -1 consoleet_ter*v.otf
consoleet_ter14bv.otf
consoleet_ter16bv.otf
consoleet_ter18bv.otf
consoleet_ter20bv.otf
consoleet_ter22bv.otf
consoleet_ter24bv.otf
consoleet_ter28bv.otf
consoleet_ter28nv.otf
consoleet_ter32bv.otf
consoleet_ter32nv.otf