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Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

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Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ligatures are amazing, I don't understand why anyone would like ascii "compound versions" of a set of symbols when there are thousands if not many hundreds of thousands of great symbols that were used in older typographic settings that are available for usage.

Ligatures obscure the underlying text, which is a problem when you actually edit it. It is okay to have light ligatures where the original text is retained but refined in style but many fonts with ligatures do too much [1], like rendering `!==` as two lines and a slashed stroke in between (come on, who on earth did think this is a good idea???). I would rather have a Unicode symbol support and automatic symbol substi…

I am not a fan of ligatures either. The "compose" key would be another option to insert various Unicode glyphs and it exists already.

Unfortunately, with monospace fonts many of these glyphs do not look nice to me due to the width constraint. Maybe a "multispace" font would be nicer while still preserving the grid alignment.

Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#72
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to dislike these sorts of ligatures because they obscure the underlying text that was typed. I would much prefer programming languages supported characters like "≠" or "≡" as aliases for operators.

Julia does that. https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/mathematical-operati...

[deleted]

Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#73
post #62
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, Imgur has fallen far. The image is so compressed and full of artifacts that I can't read any of it.

Right-click > Open image in new tab https://i.imgur.com/wsWnMq0.png

That doesn’t work on mobile, and imgur sets a long-living cache header for this redirect, so even desktop mode can’t bypass it.

Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you. When you are inverting your logic and need to delete the ! out of != but you have the ligature version you are prone to making a mistake. Best case, you notice it. Worst case you don’t and create a subtle bug.

How would you make a subtle mistake while turning != into = due to ligatures?

var a, b = true; if (a!=b) console.assert(false, "unreachable");

Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#75
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice idea, but how do you get around the potential copyright infringement?

There's not copyright in the US on a typeface (the look), you can only have copyrights on the individual implementation (the font)[1]. [1]: https://www.crowdspring.com/blog/font-law-licensing/

I suppose the font was originally created in Sweden, though, right?

Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#76
post #4

Not related to this awesome font, but is it just me who doesn't like fonts ligatures? I'd much rather see !=, than crossed =.

Plus one for the dislike camp. That vim calls them “conceal characters” gives me a bit of a chuckle for some reason.

Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#77
post #6

It's cute! Some people will enjoy it, may be brighten their day during some nasty debugging. I wonder how it does for people with dyslexia. I'm guessing not great.

I have dyslexia and I can tell I have to slow down a bit when reading this, but it’s not bad. I assume the closeness between characters makes it slightly worse for everyone, especially with characters like “o” and “c” differing by a single pixel. On the topic, I recently learned about the Dyslexie font [0] as well as OpenDyslexic [1]. You can see the goal is to make characters easily differentiated. Not sure how I fe…

Question: Are you a programmer? If so, what is you opinion on ligatures? Do they help in readability of code?

Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#78

Creator here, thanks for all the support for this objectively terrible programming font! Still working on some issues with windows not playing nicely with bold weights so be sure to watch the repository ( https://github.com/IdreesInc/Monocraft ) or follow me on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/IdreesInc ) for updates.

bold weights are really killing it on windows rn - awesome that you're aware of it

FWIW usually fonts variants are named '|font| Code' for ligatures version and '|font| Mono' for normal

but feel free to ignore reminded me of spectrum font ^|

Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ligatures obscure the underlying text, which is a problem when you actually edit it. It is okay to have light ligatures where the original text is retained but refined in style but many fonts with ligatures do too much [1], like rendering `!==` as two lines and a slashed stroke in between (come on, who on earth did think this is a good idea???). I would rather have a Unicode symbol support and automatic symbol substi…

> come on, who on earth did think this is a good idea??? Me. It’s the 21th century. It’s bad enough I have to use monospaced fonts because people can’t properly tabulate. I will at least have proper symbols rather than weird combination of glyphes.

You don't have to use a monospace font to write code.

Re: Monocraft: A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft

#80
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An IP lawyer once explained to me that "fonts" are copyrightable because they are technically computer programs, and computer programs are copyrightable. I actually find it odd that "typefaces" are not copyrightable, but I think that's more of an historical quirk than some wise feature of the legal system.

that's more of an historical quirk perfumes and recipes are not copyrightable either. It's because theses issues have been setteled in court in better times before media got in bed with politicians and lobbied til they got their monopoly

Isn't that because copyrights protect creative works in a tangible form? Perfumes are instead physical compositions; and recipes are functional, not just creative.
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