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Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

berkeleygraphics.com

71–80 of 182 posts

Re: Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd second the vote for some "testing" fonts. At the very least, could you include some screenshots of larger chunks of code, with {} etc? I can't really tell how this will look on a screen full of code.

Here is some Python, but no {}: https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/#b... I'll plan for a nice page with various languages and full page screenshots. Edit: Fixed link, thanks.

The same think happens with this font, as with some many others. It's absolutely beautiful, it looks like it was just designed for coding. Then I see actual code written with the font and goes: "Well, that was disappointing".

Don't get me wrong, it beautiful, easy to read and the price is right (in my opinion), but when you see the Python, even at 17pt, it seems squished. The characters just blurs together. This font either requires insane amounts of whitespace around it, or a high font size, I'm guessing no less than 20pt. Maybe it's just the line height that makes it weird, the characters seems like they need to be wider to avoid losing details.

Re: Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

#73
post #53

The licensing is unclear/vague/contradictory... I'm totally confused what the 'developer' license actually means when it says you can use it for "personal use in professional context, but not commercial." And how is a subscription for a print product handled? Do I have to burn my printed materials if I don't renew a subscription? Font vendors seem to _love_ coming up with weird snowflake licensing schemes rather than…

I actually wanted to make it simpler. Separating professional use (this is how Input Mono font does it) and commercial use allows developers to use fonts for their daily work, but the machine belongs to their employer and the work they do is for their employer; while also being able to provide a separate Commercial license for companies and businesses. There are no page view limits for websites (no trackers), install…

Thanks, that's what I thought it was _trying_ to say, but I'm not sure that's what it actually _does_ say.

You might look at the jetbrains individual license for some language that I think is more clear and objective: A personal license must be paid for by a single named individual, not paid or reimbursed by a company, and is not re-assignable, while the organizational license is more a "floating seat" that can be paid by a company and assigned to individual employees as needed. That helps sidestep the mess of trying to define what is "professional but not commercial."

Also, under a subscription model I'd want some assurance that previously created print materials receive a perpetual license even if I didn't renew and that I wouldn't have to try to excise it from everywhere I've used it in the past if the license ever lapsed.

Re: Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

#74
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but why make it left aligned? I like the limited width and left aligned text is also good, but IMHO the content as a whole should be in the center of the web page.

Why should the content be in the center of the webpage?

Because the user is typically looking at the center of a screen.

Sure, you can organize you windows in a way to compensate and center the content manually. But I think there are two usage patterns:

1. maximized browser windows

2. non maximized windows

For the first pattern, the above statement is essential. Naturally, the user is looking at the center of the screen. The second pattern is somewhat unpredictable, because you neither know where the window is on the screen nor the size of it. But the typical behavior for centering content (`margin: 0 auto;`) does not make any difference compared to left aligned content when the window is smaller than the content. The only hard to judge situation is, when the window is not maximized, but larger than the content and I think for that case it is pretty hard to judge if left aligned or centered content is superior.

Re: Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

#75
I wish the page had more examples at, say, the 10pt size which is more comparable to what I am using in my editor. The huge copy in the examples look beautiful but they hardly map to real world usage so not entirely helpful...

Re: Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

#76

> Berkeley Mono wears a UNIX T-shirt and aspires to be etched on control panels in black synthetic lacquer. It is Adrian Frutiger visits Bell Labs. It is Gene Kranz's command. It operates with calibrated precision and has a datasheet. It costs $75 for an individual license, not really in the spirit of UNIX

UNIX was an internal and then commercial product of ATT bell labs (and later Novell). You're misconstruing it with the FOSS movement. UNIX was created for ATT to sell more telephone service, and then later sold and licensed to other companies to likewise improve their internal computer usage. UNIX was not created to be zero cost. Apparently a commercial license for UNIX cost $20k at the time (or $150 for universities…

It was certainly not created to sell more telephone service. It was a research project that found applications to run on it, most of which had little if anything to do with telephone service at first. Much later UNIX was adapted to run telephone network equipment.

Re: Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

#77
post #53

The licensing is unclear/vague/contradictory... I'm totally confused what the 'developer' license actually means when it says you can use it for "personal use in professional context, but not commercial." And how is a subscription for a print product handled? Do I have to burn my printed materials if I don't renew a subscription? Font vendors seem to _love_ coming up with weird snowflake licensing schemes rather than…

I actually wanted to make it simpler. Separating professional use (this is how Input Mono font does it) and commercial use allows developers to use fonts for their daily work, but the machine belongs to their employer and the work they do is for their employer; while also being able to provide a separate Commercial license for companies and businesses. There are no page view limits for websites (no trackers), install…

This left me more confused - there are two cases :

- the typeface is used in media, or otherwise distributed

- the typeface is used locally in some app

Which license supports which case?

Re: Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

#78
I'd pay something to use this on my personal machine, but I don't make printed materials, I just like a nice terminal font.

Nor do I much care to use web fonts either, so while its very pretty, I dont know that its 75 dollars worth of pretty.

Re: Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

#79
Overall I really like this, but a five-pointed asterisk? Everyone knows an asterisk should have six points!

Edit: in the datasheet PDF, on page 14, I'm seeing both styles of 7 render the same. ss05 and ss06

Re: Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

#80

I wish the page had more examples at, say, the 10pt size which is more comparable to what I am using in my editor. The huge copy in the examples look beautiful but they hardly map to real world usage so not entirely helpful...

+1000. It would also be useful to see it rendered at small sizes on different OS's -- macOS and Windows and some X environments -- because the font renderers on different platforms produce different visual results and the differences are often more visible at smaller sizes.
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