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Programming Fonts – Test Drive

app.programmingfonts.org

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Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#161

Post by hnarn »

It drives me crazy when fonts look at the old convention of "strike through zero" and for some reason decides they need to be different from the convention and allow the strike to pass the edges of the zero circle. "Anka/Coder" in the linked article is guilty of this.

When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centuries.

The whole purpose of the "strike through zero" is to stop it from being mixed up with Omega. By badly thought out design and a need to be different for no reason, you just returned to square one, because the font is now unreadable for anyone that knows or works with the letter Ø.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#162

Post by gjm11 »

toyg wrote: post #135
dspillett wrote: post #134

A handy list and preview. It might be nice to include some detail as to the features provided by some of the fonts on the font list, if it can be done without making the UI too busy. I'm thinking indicators for things like: true italic provided (instead of leaving the OS to use false italics), true bold provided, programming ligatures (as seen in those like Fira Code), ... Perhaps filters too.

Ligatures could probably be simply shown by adding one or two of the most common ones ( <=, != etc...)

Maybe it's changed in the last hour or two, but for me it does indicate when ligatures are present -- in the list on the lest, under the name of each font there's a line giving name, date, and some features -- one of which is "ligatures".

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#163

Post by andai »

hnarn wrote: post #161

It drives me crazy when fonts look at the old convention of "strike through zero" and for some reason decides they need to be different from the convention and allow the strike to pass the edges of the zero circle. "Anka/Coder" in the linked article is guilty of this. When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centur…

∅

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#164

Post by rbanffy »

int_19h wrote: post #158
rbanffy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing wrong with the original IBM VGA console font Oh boy... Don't get me started on this. Those semi-consistent application of serifs, wide vertical traces and the overall MDA-ness of it drives me nuts. It's not like IBM didn't have anything better to choose from. disclaimer: I make the 3270 font, which is based on the 3270 terminal font, which is the better thing I mentioned in the above paragraph.

I took a look at 3270 font, and I definitely strongly prefer IBM VGA. I don't care about semi-consistent serifs etc - I'm not a font designer. But it's very readable . Which, again, just goes to show that this stuff is all very subjective.

It is. A lot of my strong feelings for the IBM MDA/EGA/VGA font comes from its 80's-ness and its origins. Also, at the time I first saw them (first on CGA, then on MDA) I was an active user of 3270's terminals and I wondered why would they do that if they had the choice of using something cleaner. I understand CGA dictated wide vertical stems (because NTSC) and that probably influenced the choice for MDA (it was already used in other pieces of equipment, IIRC) for consistency but...

Yes, it's a matter of personal taste.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#167

Post by AlphaWeaver »

cpeterso wrote: post #45

I'd like to see an elimination tournament of these so you can two fonts head-to-head and vote for your preferred until you discover you favorite. Identifont is a similar system. It uses a twenty-questions style format to identify an unknown font. http://www.identifont.com/

I actually did a quick hack a few weeks ago to build an "elimination" style tool for making decisions. The code is here [0] and the tool is here [1]. Might be able to adapt it to something like this.

[0]: https://github.com/weaversam8/bracket-based-decision-making

[1]: https://bracket-based-decision-making.firebaseapp.com/

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#168

Post by platz »

Luc wrote: post #109
fermienrico wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do yourself a favor and try to design a font from scratch using FontForge (free tool). Let us know what you learn from the experience, how long it took to perfect it and what was the end result.

Still quite a bit easier than creating a F2P game to those same standards.

You can't sell a product with an F2P game. Commercial fonts are used in products. Thus the higher prices.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#170

Post by strainer »

me_bx wrote: post #121

Reporting a bug here as I see that the author is around: For some reason, switching fonts does not work on my browser. Firefox 64.0.2, windows 10 64 bits No error message in the console, and ublock origin plugin didn't block anything on the page. Opening the same page in Google Chrome worked well: font changes in the demo code whenever user clicks on a font in the list.

Likely this setting has been disabled: View > Preferences > Language & Appearance > Advanced > Allow pages to choose their own fonts...
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