Minitel Service Screen

ミニテルのサービス画面 / 1980–2012 / Layout / Digital Retro

A service page built to finish inside one screen of a grid terminal. The name of the service sits along the top, the choices run down the screen as a numbered list, and headings and pictures are assembled from coarse blocks that divide the character cell.

Minitel Service Screen — Bernard Marti, Thomson videotex terminal used in the Vélizy Télétel trial, 1980 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 — Bernard Marti, Thomson videotex terminal used in the Vélizy Télétel trial, 1980 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 · CC BY 3.0

Minitel Service Screen — Bernard Marti, Minitel displaying a photovideotex page, 1984 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 FR — Bernard Marti, Minitel displaying a photovideotex page, 1984 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 FR · CC BY-SA 2.0 fr

Minitel Service Screen — Bernard Marti, Minitel terminal displaying Japanese, 1986 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 FR — Bernard Marti, Minitel terminal displaying Japanese, 1986 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 FR · CC BY-SA 2.0 fr

At a glance

Visual cues

A band carrying the name of the service along the top, with numbered choices running down the screen in one column
Headings and pictures assembled from blocks that split a single character cell three down and two across
Only eight saturated colours in play, with no intermediate hues and no gradation
The place to type marked by a band of reversed video, with emphasis limited to reversal and an underline

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

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Dictionary entry

Type: Everything sits on one fixed width cell. Since type size cannot change, emphasis has to come from reversed video and underlines alone.
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.
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.
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.
Further study: the definition of the pseudo graphic mosaic forms in the Minitel 1B technical specification / the mechanism by which the eight colours are replaced by eight steps of grey on a monochrome terminal / services being known by a short code such as 3615, and those codes being posted up around town

Related entries

Teletext Art (テレテキスト・アート)Shared effects: Technique / Nostalgia.Compare Minitel Service Screen and Teletext Art
Terminal UI (ターミナルUI)Shared effects: Technique.Compare Minitel Service Screen and Terminal UI

Often confused with

Teletext Art (テレテキスト・アート)compare

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