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In search of the perfect writing font

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Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#11

Post by jacobolus »

BVthrowaway wrote: post #4

This view seems to have fallen to the wayside, but I vehemently prefer rasterized / bitmapped fonts. Every type of font smoothing looks blurry to me and causes eye strain. Of course, very few modern fonts look good without smoothing - only a few of the old standbys (Arial, etc...) have usable bitmapped versions. While Linux handles this fine, Windows requires replacing Segoe UI at the registry level in order to fully…

Have you tried a finer resolution display, and moving your display further away?

Eye strain will be notably reduced if you move the display 3 feet away from your eyes (requires less convergence and less accommodation), and at that distance 220 ppi starts to have pixels that are close to indistinguishable, even for folks with 20/20 vision.

Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#12

Post by couchand »

It's painful to see an article this long discussing typefaces in detail that uses the word font incorrectly so many times. In casual usage I let the mistake by, but the author of this article really should know better.

The visual design of the letterforms and spacing of text is a typeface, not a font. A font is the delivery vehicle for a typeface -- it's a file format.

Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#13

Post by forgotmypw »

_xhok wrote: post #9

I used to tell myself I couldn't code or write without the perfect font. I'd spend hours looking for it, and end up not getting any work done. When I finally did get around to actually working, five minutes in and I'd forget about the font completely. I have a (rather lazy) friend who's been asking me to help him start a blog for years now. I've promised to after he produces his first block of content, and he keeps s…

Why don't you spend 5 minutes putting together a simple WordPress blog for him, and change it later?

Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#14

Post by chrismorgan »

For the last couple of years I’ve been using Triplicate as my standard monospace font, and it has a Poly variant which is proportional and works really well for code presentation (provided you aren’t trying to line things up with spaces).

It makes things like i, j and space narrower, rather than things like w and m wider as this article discusses. I reckon narrowing some yields a more pleasing result than widening some.

http://triplicatefont.com/

Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#15

Post by discoursism »

_xhok wrote: post #9

I used to tell myself I couldn't code or write without the perfect font. I'd spend hours looking for it, and end up not getting any work done. When I finally did get around to actually working, five minutes in and I'd forget about the font completely. I have a (rather lazy) friend who's been asking me to help him start a blog for years now. I've promised to after he produces his first block of content, and he keeps s…

I'd guess in almost any trade, the craftspeople care about their tools, even aspects that are mostly aesthetic. I consider myself pretty busy, but I still spend a half an hour every few months reviewing the space of available fonts, looking for something that appeals even more than my current favorite.

(FWIW that's PT Mono for the last few months, after almost a decade of using Ubuntu Mono exclusively.)

Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#16

Post by chrismorgan »

Fun fact that people may not be aware of: not all glyphs in monospace fonts are actually the same width (provided the font supports enough of Unicode). Some glyphs are twice as wide, such as CJK/fullwidth characters in general. The Unicode standard includes a list of codepoint column widths—some zero (e.g. combining characters), some one, some two, some one or two depending on the context (the language).

Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#17

Post by microcolonel »

chrismorgan wrote: post #16

Fun fact that people may not be aware of: not all glyphs in monospace fonts are actually the same width (provided the font supports enough of Unicode). Some glyphs are twice as wide, such as CJK/fullwidth characters in general. The Unicode standard includes a list of codepoint column widths—some zero (e.g. combining characters), some one, some two, some one or two depending on the context (the language).

Really makes the "duospace" naming even more confusing. My brain was expecting either two spacings, or all fullwidth.

Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#18

Post by brians »

akuri wrote: post #8

With a 50% width space option, the duospace approach might be usable for “pedantic” code indentation (that is indentation beyond just nesting, but also vertically aligning elements other than the start)

Exactly. But without that, midline alignment is shot.

I’ll stick with 8x13.

Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#19

Post by GuiA »

couchand wrote: post #12

It's painful to see an article this long discussing typefaces in detail that uses the word font incorrectly so many times. In casual usage I let the mistake by, but the author of this article really should know better. The visual design of the letterforms and spacing of text is a typeface, not a font. A font is the delivery vehicle for a typeface -- it's a file format.

A typeface is the design, a font is a specific incarnation of it. Helvetica Bold 12pt and Helvetica 18pt are two different fonts from the same typeface, Helvetica.

This comes from letterpress days where “font” referred to a collection of lead characters of a given typeface, weight, and size.

Re: In search of the perfect writing font

#20

Post by Derbasti »

_xhok wrote: post #9

I used to tell myself I couldn't code or write without the perfect font. I'd spend hours looking for it, and end up not getting any work done. When I finally did get around to actually working, five minutes in and I'd forget about the font completely. I have a (rather lazy) friend who's been asking me to help him start a blog for years now. I've promised to after he produces his first block of content, and he keeps s…

For me, I need breaks, and stimulation. Sometimes, tinkering with fonts and colors is just the right kind of distraction to get a project back on track, and to replenish my joy of coding.

Honestly, I think I have about six hours of full-concentration work in me in a typical day. Less, if it's mentally demanding work. Sometimes, the best thing I can do for a project is take a walk, or let it rest for a bit and let my subconscious keep churning on it.

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