A font recreated from photographs of classic Commodore 64 keycaps
- ID
- 32840
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 07 Oct 2026, 5:17 PM
- Fetched
- 08 Oct 2026, 12:50 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://github.com/szabadkai/c64-keyboard-font/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 3.0
- Created
- 08 Oct 2026, 12:51 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
GitHub repo szabadkai/c64-keyboard-font reconstructs the printed lettering on classic Commodore 64 keycaps from photographs, shipping cleaned-up outlines as TTF, OTF, webfont, and editable glyph files plus a preview.html specimen. It has 381 stars, 6 forks and 9 commits, is at version 1.107, and covers uppercase letters, numbers, punctuation, arrows, £, selected Hungarian accented characters, f1–f12 function labels, and all 63 PETSCII graphic front legends arranged by key. The author explicitly notes it recreates the printed key legends — including geometric reconstructions of PETSCII graphics — and not the C64 screen bitmap font.
Why it matters
If you need authentic C64 keycap lettering for a retro UI, game asset, or hardware mockup, this gives you redistributable outlines you can install and edit instead of tracing keycap photos yourself — open preview.html, click the PETSCII buttons to insert symbols, then copy into your app. The catch is stated in the README: this is the printed-legend font, not the screen bitmap font, so it will not give pixel-accurate C64 screen emulation. Install v1.107 over older versions and restart apps still showing the old font.
Discussion angle
The README draws a line between printed keycap legends and the on-screen bitmap font — what other 'authentic retro' assets do we routinely conflate, and where does that bite you when building an emulator, a retro-themed UI, or a mockup?