How it works
This digital clock font generator lights what you type in DSEG7 Classic, a seven-segment font, with the unlit segments showing dimly behind the lit ones, as on a real display. It opens on 12:34 in red on black.
Read the full guide
Seven bars or fourteen
DSEG7 Classic builds every character from seven bars, so letters take whichever case fits: HELLO comes out as hELLo. X is drawn as H, and S loses its top bar so it cannot pass for 5. DSEG14 Classic adds four diagonals and two centre uprights and splits the middle bar, enough for every capital. Neither has accents.
Lit and unlit
Lit segments draws every segment in a dim shade, then the lit ones on top. Red display on Black is an LED; Grey display on Clock display is an LCD. Swapped, red's unlit bars print darker than the lit ones. In Slime green, Gold, Sky blue and Flame the unlit bars are nearly as bright, so 12:34 reads 88:88. Use Soft glow there.
Tips
- Type ! for a blank digit. A space is only as narrow as the colon and holds no digit's place.
- The full stop takes no width and tucks between two digits, so -12.5°C is six cells wide, not seven.
- Orbitron, Audiowide and DotGothic16 are not segment fonts; on them Lit segments draws plain letters.
Questions and answers
How old is the seven-segment digit?
Older than electronics. Wikipedia finds seven-segment figures in a patent as early as 1903 and on a lamp-lit boiler-room panel in 1910, and says they did not achieve widespread use until LEDs arrived in the 1970s. Seven bars allow 128 patterns; ten are the digits.
Does the clock run?
No. It draws what you type, and the picture never ticks. For a countdown or a scoreboard, make one picture per reading. Every digit in the two DSEG fonts has the same width, so 12:34 and 12:35 line up exactly.
Can I use these digits in a game or on a product?
Yes. The DSEG README says the fonts may be used for non-commercial and commercial purposes under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. Orbitron, Audiowide and DotGothic16 carry the same licence.