New font: nic7pin – We Saw a Chicken …

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New font: nic7pin

Written by

scruss

in

type

A rendering of a 7-pin dot matrix font, as used by the Epson MX-70 reduced-cost printer from the mid-1980s.

note the complete lack of descenders

nic7pin-font.zipDownload

(github mirror: scruss/nic7pin: a 7-pin dot matrix font, as used by the Epson MX-70)

Name

Seiko Epson Corporation is named as “son of EP-101”, for the world’s first compact, lightweight digital printer. I’m Scottish, and in Scots Gaelic “son of” is mac. Unfortunately, that prefix has been co-opted by an overpriced computer vendor. In Gaelic, nic means “daughter of”, so as an oblique compliment to Epson, this font is named daughter of 7 pin. It seemed like a good idea at the time …

Coverage

ASCII.

Design Size

The 12 point design size is meant to reproduce 12 characters per inch horizontally, and six lines per inch vertically.

Source

While this font is produced entirely by one Python FontForge script, the code is too ugly for you to look at. The included mx70.json is likely more useful: it contains all of the pin definitions keyed by character name.

Licence

© 2026 – Stewart Russell, scruss.com with Reserved Font Name nic7pin

This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font Licence, Version 1.1. https://openfontlicense.org/

[I do not agree with SIL’s missionary work in any way, and the use of this licence isn’t an endorsement of SIL.]

References

Epson MX-70 User’s Manual, Appendix C: Character Set (p.83)

identify this peripheral – Identifying a dot-matrix printer from its font – no descenders, no half-pixel shift, mid/late 1980’s – Retrocomputing Stack Exchange — where I found out about this silly thing.

dotmatrix font otf type typography

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