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Bitmap fonts define each character as a simple binary bitmap for each character. This is what DOS uses. Originally DOS used the VGA’a built-in font, in which every character is the same width and height. This has the disadvantage that narrow characters, sich as i take up as much width as more regular characters such as h, so the amount of empty space around the i is too much.

    Also characters with descenders such as g can not actually descend below the bottom of the bitmap, so as the diagram shows, the end result will not be visually pleasing, and we have also wasted some valuable pixels around the i.