The Good: Interesting fonts which can be fun for fans of Star Trek.
The Bad: Outdated OS for installation, May not interface with newer products, A free version exists now!
The Basics: A very basic font package, the Star Trek Font Pack allows one to write text in limited Star Trek fonts, but a newer, more complete, free version now exists!
Whenever I try to write software reviews, I find myself in an awkward place. I am not a gaming geek and there are few applications that I truly love. The truth is, my main problem with trying to write in Software is simple: I tend to use my PC as a glorified word processor and I’m not much into computer games or programs. I spend hours each day on my computer writing novels and reviews, not playing. And when I do play, I tend to play surprisingly graphics-limited, intellectually challenging games. Like when I get stressed, I take the edge off with good cocoa and a game of Freecell (I’m on game 4623 now). But back when I was in college, I was into playing on my computer more and I dug out my old box of software and I was actually shocked when I discovered one of the old programs was in the database here: the Star Trek Font Pack by Bitstream. For those who read my other reviews and know how I am a huge fan of Star Trek (reviewed here!), I suspect that my owning this program comes as very little of a surprise.
The Star Trek Font Pack was produced back when the dominant installation method was still 3.5” floppy discs and the font pack is housed on a single 3.5” disc. The program is ridiculously simple: this allows users to add fonts from Star Trek and the first few Star Trek films to their computers so they may make text that looks like it came off the set of Star Trek. While this might sound cool, the absence of the basic Star Trek: The Next Generation font (the typeface used in the opening credits or the closing credit text) is disappointing for fans.
What this does mean, though, is that fans may create text that has excessive serifs at the beginning and ends of words (as the Star Trek movies title sequences often had) or they may write in Klingon characters which almost no one in the world will be able to understand or decipher. More practically what it means is that users have access to the fonts that have the borders that almost look like racing stripes, which appear on the starships in the original Star Trek franchise, most notably the U.S.S. Enterprise and the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A.
Installation of Bitstream’s font pack was simple back in the day as the font pack has a simple setup.exe file which installed the font pack quickly to one’s hard drive. The thing is, the Star Trek Font Pack runs on Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows 98. I am still running on Windows 98 (part of my security for my PC which is predicated on he philosophy that most jerks aren’t going to bother writing viruses for such an outdated OS) and it took about a minute to load the font pack on when I loaded it. Now, all of my compatible word processing programs allow me to write in any of the fifty fonts which are included in the Star Trek Font Pack.
Most of the fonts are remarkably similar and in order to actually notice the difference, I have to type in them. So, for example, the Star Trek IV and Star Trek V title sequence fonts are almost indistinguishable from one another on most letters and it takes the needs of a very specific type of Star Trek fan to want to have the different fonts on this font pack. It is worth noting that while all of my old Microsoft word processing programs are compatible and easily find the Bitstream fonts from the Star Trek Font Pack, some of my even older software like PFS Window Works is unable to import the fonts. I suspect that Windows products now would still be able to acknowledge and use the Star Trek Font Pack.
But that’s where the changing times truly do make this an utterly pointless product. The Star Trek Font Pack is yet another casualty of the internet, where software may often be found for free through licensed sources. While looking up a few details about this product (my documentation for the OS’s was lost at least two moves ago), I discovered that Startrek.com has a new Star Trek font pack which includes 79 different fonts from the entire franchise! In addition to human and Klingon characters, obsessive fans can write in Cardassian, Vulcan and Romulan characters (among others). Because Startrek.com is the official website owned by Paramount/CBS and they give the new font pack away for free, it is hard to see why anyone would want the twelve year-old software that offers less and may or may not work on newer systems.
Bitstream created a solid font pack with the Star Trek Font Pack, which allowed users to write in fifty different Star Trek fonts with sizes from 8 point up to 72 point with no degradation of quality. Of course, monitors and printers twelve years ago were not what they are now and I suspect this older font pack would have some fonts which look pixilated or blockish on newer equipment. Frankly, I’m not wasting the time to find out: for free, I can get more, making it easy to finally launch my floppy discs from years ago toward the garbage can. After all, if I have a crash now, I’ll upgrade with the on-line version!
For another software review, please check out my take on the GameBoy Star Trek 25th Anniversary game here!
1/10
For other software reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!
© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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