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The most expensive coding font for free?

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Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#31

Post by petercooper »

DanBC wrote: post #10
libria wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, I think a 220k income would be taxed at ~40% state + federal. And yes, that does suck.

In the UK someone would start a company, and be an employee of that company with a wage, and make themselves the only shareholder, and then an accountant would say "pay yourself some dividends now". At least that's what people used to do, but I guess it's been stopped now.

Nope, it's still standard practice.

You're still going to be paying at least 20% corporation tax on the profits though and then probably 22.5% on the dividend itself.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#32

Post by kls »

DanBC wrote: post #10
libria wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, I think a 220k income would be taxed at ~40% state + federal. And yes, that does suck.

In the UK someone would start a company, and be an employee of that company with a wage, and make themselves the only shareholder, and then an accountant would say "pay yourself some dividends now". At least that's what people used to do, but I guess it's been stopped now.

We have a similar entity here in the States, it is called and S-Corp. It is designed for single owner businesses and does allow the owner to dodge some tax burden. Specifically the double taxation on income that a single owner would receive if there where under the rules of a C-Corp as well as some unemployment and FICA.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#33

Post by moe »

fabrizioschiavi wrote: post #19
stdbrouw wrote: post #6

There are just so many wonderful monospace fonts already out there that either come with your OS (Monaco, Consolas, Ubuntu Mono) or are free that I don't know why I should bother. People still pay for fonts instead of downloading cheap knockoffs because of ligatures, a wide amount of characters and meticulous kerning. All things that a monospaced font doesn't need. The one thing this font seems to add is that it is s…

True. There are a lot good monospaced font but it's impossible for me working at screen with these cool fonts for this I designed PragmataPro. Tastes are tastes. All the glyphs of PragmataPro are designed under suggestions of programmers. In the set there are many glyphs ignored by other monospaced font designers, because I designed this font with programmers for programmers. PragmataPro are designed to work with and…

And it works

Apparently not on the Mac.

The font looks quite terrible in your own Mac screenshot, there is visible blur at least in the letters w,m and T.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#34

Post by achompas »

Let's delay arguments about whether one should change fonts or not [0] and think about crowdfunding applied to design work. We should be more interested in whether this will work, and why or why not.

Last summer, Hyperakt [1] crowd-funded a beautiful radial depiction of the 2010 World Cup brackets [2]. I paid $25 for a great poster [3], and now Deroy has a new fan.

That project worked for the same reason all Kickstarter projects work: if the project succeeds, users and producers exchange money for goods. If the market doesn't validate your project, consumers aren't committed to pay and producers don't reap any benefits. This is a great model for project planning and idea validation.

On the other hand, this project extracts consumer rents immediately. If Fabrizio doesn't hit the $220k goal [4], users only get an option to purchase a license for $100 minus their contribution. No repercussions for the producer--he gets paid regardless. This is fine for licensing an existing font, but it sucks for spec work or otherwise non-existent work.

I'm sure everyone has a few questions about the amount he's charging. [5] However, we should focus on how Kickstarter provides a consumer-friendly market while this project exists on a producer-friendly market. These are some great introductory economic concepts.

EDIT: actually, each market has its own benefits. With Kickstarter, you can obtain market validation for free (or cheap). With IndieGogo, you can guarantee payment on existing products.

-------

[0] I took an hour to switch from Monaco to Anonymous Pro; now I wish I hadn't wasted that hour but at least I'm set for life.

[1] http://hyperakt.com/

[2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-cup-...

[3] Even more beautiful after La Furia Roja took the Cup!

[4] Btw: ouch.

[5] Are we paying for the 4 years of work he's put in? Hasn't he made money from other licenses already? There are probably some obvious answers I'm missing out on.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#35

Post by moe »

gk1 wrote: post #23
shin_lao wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's less than $ 25,000 / year, or around $ 120 / day. I don't think you can find a decent designer for $ 120 / day.

Nor would he _want_ to hire anyone to design a monospaced font for four years.

Nor is it very likely that he worked four years, every single day, on this font.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#36

Post by yan »

Just wanted to chime in: I paid Fabrizio for PragmataPro last year and haven't regretted it a bit. Maybe paying $100+ for a font isn't for everyone, but my entire life revolves around looking at fixed-width fonts and it's important to me. After trying almost everything else out there, Pragmata/PragmataPro feel much better and make me happier looking at lots of text.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#37

Post by prototypef »

rdtsc wrote: post #5

The font looks good. But does it really solve a problem most people need solved? I don't remember last time I though "Hmm, if only I had a better font, I would work so much faster/better...". I did think that when using Linux 10 years ago when my fonts were blurry and fuzzy but not now. Another way to put it, even if that font was available for free now I don't know I'd bother installing it just because ... there is…

I agree. Most modern OS monospace fonts (Consolas, Monaco, Ubuntu Mono) are more than enough for any kind of programming. I don't really see the benefit of going out and trying new fonts. IMHO font size and color highlighting (color schemes?) play a much bigger role in making my work on a text editor be faster/better.

Of course, it's a matter of personal taste, I did see one guy using Arial as a font on his text editor once...

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#38

Post by trin_ »

hipsterelitist wrote: post #7

4 years and over 200k dollars seems like quite a bit. I understand being meticulous, but this is a bit absurd.

he actually elaborated on that and said that after fees and taxes it would be $96000 and that it would last him for about 800 days to design every charackter.

Re: The most expensive coding font for free?

#40

Post by wccrawford »

davidu wrote: post #9
wccrawford wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't gamble. I'm willing to commit to kickstarter because I'll get my money back if the thing falls through. But whenever they say my money will go towards a discount (or a charity) if the deal fails, I never go for it. I'm not sure I've ever seen one succeed in that situation, actually.

What? You get your money back with Kickstarter? I've never heard of that... I'm pretty sure I've lost a few hundred bucks on failed kick-starters... I mean, they meet the goal, but the person never delivers.

Well yeah, if the person doesn't deliver, you've helped fund them, but get nothing back. That's why kickstarter projects aren't supposed to supply actual value for the pledge. A lot of the latest one offer the product as a bonus, but don't tell you that you won't get the product if they fail.
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