Minitel (Télétel) Screen vs PLATO Terminal Screen
ミニテル画面 / PLATO端末の画面
Minitel (Télétel) Screen comes from Digital Retro and PLATO Terminal Screen from Platform Screen Languages. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Minitel (Télétel) Screen
The screen craft laid down by France's Télétel standard. Pictures are tiled out of mosaic characters on a grid of 40 columns by 24 rows, each cell divided three down and two across, and the whole palette runs to eight colours, which are black, white, blue, green, red, yellow, magenta and cyan. A service was known by the short code that followed 3615, and the terminals stayed in use until 2012.
PLATO Terminal Screen
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PLATO was the computer-assisted teaching system started at the University of Illinois in the early 1960s under Donald Bitzer, and its screen is a style in its own right. It ran on plasma flat panels with touch input, and the TUTOR language placed text and drawing by coordinate rather than by line flow, so a lesson was assembled straight onto the surface. Its notes files, private messages and multiplayer games set the shape of later online screens.
| Minitel (Télétel) Screen | PLATO Terminal Screen | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1980–2012 | 1972–1980s |
| Family | Digital Retro | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | A grid of 40 columns by 24 rows where letters and pictures occupy cells of exactly the same size / Images assembled from blocks that split a single character cell three down and two across / Only eight saturated colours in play, which are black, white, blue, green, red, yellow, magenta and cyan / Emphasis available in two forms only, reversed video and an underline | Text and line drawing glowing in a single orange on a black panel / Characters placed by coordinate rather than by line flow, cutting into the middle of a drawing / Text and graphics sharing one surface, with no frames dividing the regions / Questions answered by touching the screen itself |
| Best used for | Fitting a picture and running text onto one screen where both must sit on the same character grid · Designing a screen limited to eight colours, where emphasis can only come from reversed video and underlines | Laying out a learning or operations screen where one colour carries both diagram and text on a single plane · Making screens or footage that portray the earliest online communities |
| Type | Everything sits on one fixed width cell. Since type size cannot change, emphasis has to come from reversed video and underlines alone. | One monospaced face only, with no weight contrast and at most two sizes. |
| Composition | Rule the 40 by 24 grid first, then allocate heading, body and input field onto it. Never overflow the rows, because each screen has to be complete in itself. | Place text at chosen coordinates instead of flowing lines, and separate areas with empty space rather than frames. |
| Material | Build images from blocks that divide one cell into six, three down and two across. Hold to eight colours, and allow any single cell at most two of them, one for the character and one for its ground. | Black ground, one glowing orange and no midtones, with the density of dots and strokes carrying the tone. |
| Caution | Smooth curves and midtones half erase the coarseness of the divided cell, and once that goes the grid holding the whole thing up stops being visible. | Adding scanlines and bloom to make it feel like a cathode ray tube erases the one thing that defined this screen, a flat plasma panel that glows without smearing. |