Few days ago someone posted a question on Reddit about .. text on wplace. Yeah. The site is all about drawing, and a lot of users use Discord, but then, it's often easier to leave a small note right near a drawing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WplaceLive/comments/1pwczfh/this_is_a_pretty_stupid_question_ik_but_do_we/
Few people responded with some suggestions so far, and I thought I'll skip it, but that made me think about how I evolved a specific way of writing on those sites.
I tried to prepare a few samples in similar way to those posted, and I noticed that while most of the letters fit into constant 3x5 area, I still have some little variations here and there. Some I use when I'm out of pixels and don't want to wait for regen, some I use when I want the text look extra nice, while still keeping it minimalistic.
So, well, here it goes:
You can see two main rows and some extras below. Yellow collored pixels are optional, can be skipped with little readability loss, or added back as needed.
Uppercase letters all fit into 5 rows, and mostly take 3 columns per letter. Some can be squished to 2x5, with notable obvious exception of uppercase I :)
Lowercase letters mostly fit 3x3 with small protrusions here and there. If we want to align them nicely with uppercase letters, they often need 1 or 2 lines more below the 5 main lines for capital letters. But if we don't care, they can be lifted up and fit into the same 5-line strip for uppercase.
not really always 3 column
Keen eye can spot lowercase A and uppercase Q which have optional pixel on 4col or 6row. It's sometimes really worth adding it. Re:M&W - later below.
T on diet
I rarely use 2-column version of uppercase T. It's too similar to capital Gamma, which is rare in latin scripts, but it's a common capital letter 'g' in cyrillic script. If the length of the text makes it clear it's latin, then why not use it, one pixel less. I often use 2-column lowercase T for that matter. Total width is scarce resource at times.
uppercase H, M, W
For 3-column wide versions, they simply must be pixel-perfect, and must be read pixel-perfect. I often use 4-col versions for that matter, since they require much less effort from the reader.
lowercase M, W
Yeah, I know. But try to believe me - it works, especially in longer messages. Even in the worst case of 3x3 'm' and 'w', they are still different than u/n/v. That 3x3 versions are fine if the reader is moreless familiar with reading minimalistic fonts, or if the text contains enough lowercase U/V/N so the reader can notice that m/w are a different letter. Their 4-column versions make the distinction more visible to lower the cognitive effort greatly, and wide 5-col versions look just as clear as they can in this limited space. Fun fact - 4-col and 5-col use the same amount of pixels :)
pointy vs rounded
Funny little detail about capital M and W - they are often written in 'pointy' style, not 'rounded' style like I drew here. 'Pointy' style makes use of full 5-pixel high legs, and displaces the middle notch by 1 row. 'Rounded' style doesn't and saves 2 pixels in that way :)
outrageously ugly 3x5 capital N
I think I ever drew it only once. Not only it looks U G L Y, it also takes 1 more pixel than its 4-col version, which in turn is easily readable, nice and pretty. But, 3 cols vs 4 cols. Life is full of choices, right? :D
two styles for lowercase E
I like the one in the main row, it's compact and feels to fit better among other lowercase letters in this set. But the alternate version below is more readable to untrained eye, and ... takes the same amount of pixels. But it just doesnt align well with others.
While it works for quick messages, requests and inquiries, it's not so good for i.e. links. While colon or slash is easy, but adding some other special characters can be rather challenging (hello ampersand, you little ****).
Fortunatelly adding digits are really easy (yup! I did no digits in the sample! did you notice? :D). Differentiating 0 from O, or 5 from S, or 2 from Z is important, that's why uppercase O had no 'corners' filled, S was curvy, and so on. This allows to use one of the simplest (and maybe one of the oldest, too) style for all digits, and still be clearly distinct from all letters. With the exception of 1, which needed one pixel more to distinguish from single-column capital I.
need help? = 25 + 26 + 5 = 56px (9chars, avg: 6.22px/char; 6.3 if to ignore '?')
template link pls! = 49 + 22 + 17 + 4 = 92px (16chars, avg: 5.75px/char; 5.8 if to ignore '!')
It seems safe to say it's around 6px per character, but it's hard to call it thorough statistical analysis :D
