Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

quoteunquoteapps.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 97 posts

Re: Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

#61

Post by ygra »

bauerd wrote: post #13
Groxx wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

strange. mine looks different (but ř is also a totally different shape) https://imgur.com/a/VpiXcGI (Firefox on Windows)

Probably your browser falling back to a default font. Sure that Courier Prime includes that symbol?

Perhaps the webfont on that page uses a subset and maybe the author of the page has the font also installed locally, so fallback would choose the locally installed font. I can see how it could happen without noticing and most people would not spot a single wrong character on the page when looking at it.

Re: Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

#62

Post by Zanni »

alangpierce wrote: post #38

Looks like here's the original announcement, which has more background on motivations and has a comparison with regular Courier: http://johnaugust.com/2013/introducing-courier-prime

Thanks for this. Much better explanation, and it's helpful to know this was commissioned by John August who's a legit screenwriter. (He's credited on the Quote-Unquote Apps page too, but without context, I didn't recognize his name.)

Re: Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

#63

Post by comex »

anonytrary wrote: post #19
arthurfm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested in Times Newer Roman. [1] It's like Times New Roman, but 5-10% wider so enables you to write 13% fewer words. [1] https://timesnewerroman.com/

Of course that's a thing! Although 13% doesn't sound like a significant amount. The trick I used in high school: Write the essay. If it's too short by 20-30%, increase the verbosity in every place you can until it's long enough. If it's short by more than 30% then you have bigger problems. If your essay only needs an extra page on a 15 page assignment, chances are you can add fluff and easily hit the 15 page mark.

I think I'd have more use for the opposite: a font that's 13% narrower, to stuff more words into a page limit. It's harder to make text more concise than more verbose!

Re: Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

#64

Post by mcv »

whoisjuan wrote: post #37
munificent wrote: post #25

This is a really neat solution to a very constrained problem space. For those who don't know, Hollywood lives and breathes 12 point Courier. It is the standard font for screenplays. Producers won't even look at a script that is set in anything else because it implies the author doesn't know industry culture and norms. Also, by having a standard font size and metrics, it means that the number of pages in a script dire…

Thanks for explaining this. I was having trouble to understand what was the concrete problem this font was trying to solve. That makes a lot of sense. Especially the standardization of text length to determine actual playtime.

I don't see the relationship between text length and actual play time. Plays and movies aren't just people spewing lines non-stop. Text/playtime varies a lot between a Tarantino movie and something like Mad Max: Fury Road. It seems like a pointless metric.

And while I like courier in general, I thought typography experts disliked it because it's not as readable as proportional fonts. I'd expect readability to be important for screenplays too.

Besides, stuff like word count is easy to automate.

So to me it seems that if the industry indeed insists on everything being in courier, that's more likely to be a traditionalist remnant from the typewriter era rather than a rational decision. But I admit I don't know this industry at all.

Re: Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

#65

Post by mcv »

Groxx wrote: post #15
bauerd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably your browser falling back to a default font. Sure that Courier Prime includes that symbol?

probably. and I sure hope so, since they use it as an example. but why in the world would you have that happen on a font demo site? use an image/svg. otherwise it's risking becoming a demonstration that it's unreliable/you don't know what you're doing. (not that browsers make this stuff easy... but still.)

The fact that it renders in two very different ways for different people suggests this is an error. A pretty bad one indeed for a font demo page. I hope they fix it.

Has this been reported already? If not, I will. (Edit: I reported it on their support page.)

Re: Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

#66

Post by ealhad »

oneseven wrote: post #24
heyjudy wrote: post #20

Probably good for full-screen writing. Anywho. Feel free to add an opinion, I've been evaluating and whittling choices of fonts for code development: So far Monaco and Source Code Pro seem best. - Fira Mono https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Fira+Mono - Hack https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ - Inconsolata https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Inconsolata - Monaco http://www.gringod.com/2006/11/01/new-version-of-monaco-font.…

Fira Code is Fira Mono with coding ligatures: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode I used to prefer Consolas (Inconsolata is a ~clone of Consolas) but the ligatures made me switch.

Ligatures really are neat, indeed.

Re: Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

#67

Post by cylinder714 »

This reminds me of my preferred typeface from when I had a Selectric, Prestige Elite. You don't see it much these days, as Courier is bundled with PostScript printers and Windows, whereas Prestige Elite isn't free.

Courier has a pitch of ten characters per inch, while PE runs twelve per inch. Ideal for business correspondence, but probably a bit too dense for scripts (and college papers!).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_Elite

Re: Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

#68

Post by captainmuon »

munificent wrote: post #25

This is a really neat solution to a very constrained problem space. For those who don't know, Hollywood lives and breathes 12 point Courier. It is the standard font for screenplays. Producers won't even look at a script that is set in anything else because it implies the author doesn't know industry culture and norms. Also, by having a standard font size and metrics, it means that the number of pages in a script dire…

If hollywood producers are so famously picky, I wonder if they will reject a script with this font because it simply looks different.

I don't think you'll be able to explain to them that it is metrically identical, just like you can't explain to your garbage man that you are using a decomposable plastic bag, but they have the strict order to not accept plastic in your organic trash (if you live in the kind of place that separates trash like this).

It could be great after you get your screenplay accepted, if you want to have a nicer copy that matches line-by-line the courier version.

Re: Courier Prime: It’s Courier, Just Better

#69

Post by jforberg »

mcv wrote: post #64
whoisjuan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for explaining this. I was having trouble to understand what was the concrete problem this font was trying to solve. That makes a lot of sense. Especially the standardization of text length to determine actual playtime.

I don't see the relationship between text length and actual play time. Plays and movies aren't just people spewing lines non-stop. Text/playtime varies a lot between a Tarantino movie and something like Mad Max: Fury Road. It seems like a pointless metric. And while I like courier in general, I thought typography experts disliked it because it's not as readable as proportional fonts. I'd expect readability to be impo…

> Plays and movies aren't just people spewing lines non-stop.

Screenplays contain more than just lines.

Post reply on HN