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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: setfont.c -- set your CLI's font
Message-ID: <1243@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Tue, 28-Oct-86 23:17:01 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1243
Posted: Tue Oct 28 23:17:01 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Oct-86 22:49:44 EST
References: <1982@well.UUCP> <425@uwmacc.UUCP> <21961@rochester.ARPA>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 22

In article <21961@rochester.ARPA>, mcinerny@rochester.ARPA (Michael McInerny) writes:
>                                                                  I also
> whipped up a "dotty" font (<sp> = 1 clear pixel, all else = 1 set pixel),
> which has the interesting feature of approximating a "zoom" function:
> you can use it to get an overview of a file, etc.

LucasFilm used this idea in a window system they wrote.  The scroll bars
of text windows have the text appear in the "dotty" font *in the scroll bar*.
(You have to adjust so the window height shows dots for the whole file.)
This lets you easily see the paragraph structure of text, or the function
indentation in C, in the scroll bar, and makes it much easier to just zoom
down to where you want to go.

Since they couldn't necessarily spare one dot per character, they had to
adapt.  Each pixel represented some number of characters (could be 1, <1, 
or >1) in some number of lines.  If all the chars it represents are blank,
it is white; otherwise, it is black.  This will show gross structure even
with a large file displayed in a small scroll bar.
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
  Overheard at a funeral: "I know this may be an awkward time, but do
  you recall him ever mentioning source code?"		-- Charles Addams