Slashed 0 and Ø in nordic countries. Though not abiguous in sharing the exact same shapes, many characters can share similar structures that (arguably; citation needed) can cause visual confusion. For example; 3 and 8 in a typeface like Helvetica are very similar. Opening the aperture of the 3 or using a form with a corner in the upper right can be observed in some UI typefaces. The "single story a" can be an issue i…
What is a tail-less t? Google didn't help me at all on this one.
I'm sure this is like tabs vs spaces for typographists, but why the hell do people make and use sans-serif fonts? Even ignoring aesthetics, the fact that there are horrendous ambiguities (like between I and l) renders these fonts completely inappropriate for computational tasks like copying passwords or secret keys. I have run into this problem multiple times on OS X and iOS, where the password managers use sans seri…
This is valid commentary and subject to much discussion throughout the recent history of typography. There's always a blance condition between personality, legibility, character ambiguity, pace, and so on. Every typeface needs to go in some direction on these dimensions, which is why we have different font families for different uses! For instance, mono-spaced fonts with "slab" serifs are popular with computer code since column alignment (mono-spaced) and ambiguity (slab serifs and other visual traits like slashed zero) are used. However, for most people it's easier to read a variable-width font with regular serifs for longer text, like what you'd find in a book. Similarly, for user-interface labels, dialogs, buttons, etc it's often better to use a font without serifs and with a little more tracking/letter-spacing than what you'd use for large bodies of text (e.g. in a book.) Interface is designed for the latter use-case; user interfaces on computer screens.
A disproportionate sans serif without any letter spacing. It's free though, so better than nothing. Edit: Dear downvoters, what I am saying is that you can take any ramdom sans serif, reduce the letter-spacing and you end up with a similar looking font face which might be even more balanced. Despite my criticism, I expressed my high appreciation that the creator offers his work for free. If you disagree let me know w…
> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. [0]
I'm sure this is like tabs vs spaces for typographists, but why the hell do people make and use sans-serif fonts? Even ignoring aesthetics, the fact that there are horrendous ambiguities (like between I and l) renders these fonts completely inappropriate for computational tasks like copying passwords or secret keys. I have run into this problem multiple times on OS X and iOS, where the password managers use sans seri…
But aren't passwords just copied? Why does the font matter?
This is based on Roboto (reusing some outlines directly; not initially acknowledged by the designer on the marketing site), and arguably doesn't tread much new ground either in character or use-case or license. Not convinced there is anything this adds to an already crowded space.
Hello Jack. I'm the creator of Interface. Indeed many glyphs's outlines comes from Roboto (though fitted into different glyph boxes.) The "playground" feature of the website even has a feature for comparing Interface with Roboto. When you do, and you look at the details, you'll find that Interface is actually quite different from Roboto, at least as far as "different" goes with utilitarian UI fonts. https://rsms.me/i…
You should probably be loading the Roboto font via Google Fonts or similar, because my system does not have Roboto installed by default, so it is defaulting to serif in your comparison.
This is based on Roboto (reusing some outlines directly; not initially acknowledged by the designer on the marketing site), and arguably doesn't tread much new ground either in character or use-case or license. Not convinced there is anything this adds to an already crowded space.
Hello Jack. I'm the creator of Interface. Indeed many glyphs's outlines comes from Roboto (though fitted into different glyph boxes.) The "playground" feature of the website even has a feature for comparing Interface with Roboto. When you do, and you look at the details, you'll find that Interface is actually quite different from Roboto, at least as far as "different" goes with utilitarian UI fonts. https://rsms.me/i…
Hi Rasmus, I think that at the point size at which this is meant to be used—e.g. around 11px (https://rsms.me/interface/lab/?size=11&compare=roboto) —the differences between the two become harder to distinguish. The issue is really that the character of the type is going to be dictated by the systematic decisions: stroke weight, x-height, proportion, spacing. Starting from Roboto and not changing these parameters in your solution means drastically limiting how far away from the original source that you can realistically get. In the end, changing the stroke endings and changing the bounding box of some characters in invisible in the intended use case.
Here is a screenshot comparing Roboto (11.5px) to InterfaceRSMS (11px), which illustrates: http://imgur.com/a/nl5mp
There are plenty of UI typefaces out there that take a noticeably different approach, an easy comparison to Lucida Grande is probably enough to justify the point. (EDIT: for completeness, http://imgur.com/a/CjD06)
Hello Jack. I'm the creator of Interface. Indeed many glyphs's outlines comes from Roboto (though fitted into different glyph boxes.) The "playground" feature of the website even has a feature for comparing Interface with Roboto. When you do, and you look at the details, you'll find that Interface is actually quite different from Roboto, at least as far as "different" goes with utilitarian UI fonts. https://rsms.me/i…
You should probably be loading the Roboto font via Google Fonts or similar, because my system does not have Roboto installed by default, so it is defaulting to serif in your comparison. At least I think that's the issue.
If you have homebrew you can do:
brew cask install font-roboto