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Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing

blakewatson.com

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Re: Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing

#2
> Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing

The article doesn’t use the font it is extolling the virtues of, except for illustration. I found that interesting.

Also, there is something that gets under my skin about using anything other than monospaced to write code, as was one of the demo’s. I would genuinely be fine with writing code in a monospaced Arial or Times, but even courier-semispaced makes me shiver inexplicably.

Re: Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing

#3

> Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing The article doesn’t use the font it is extolling the virtues of, except for illustration. I found that interesting. Also, there is something that gets under my skin about using anything other than monospaced to write code, as was one of the demo’s. I would genuinely be fine with writing code in a monospaced Arial or Times, but even courier-semispaced makes me shiver…

> The article doesn’t use the font it is extolling the virtues of, except for illustration. I found that interesting.

I do use them for writing and coding.

Re: Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing

#7
I think when a font has all the characteristics of being monospaced like large serifs etc., but actually isn't, it looks subtly "off". I remember distinctly the user manual of a motherboard I had near the turn of the century somehow had screenshots of the BIOS setup utility rendered in almost-monospaced Courier New, and it looked sufficiently weird that it was distracting.

Re: Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing

#8

I think when a font has all the characteristics of being monospaced like large serifs etc., but actually isn't, it looks subtly "off". I remember distinctly the user manual of a motherboard I had near the turn of the century somehow had screenshots of the BIOS setup utility rendered in almost-monospaced Courier New, and it looked sufficiently weird that it was distracting.

Courier New is monospaced.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/microsoft-supplied....

Re: Almost monospaced: the perfect fonts for writing

#10
Another reason for using almost monospace: international languages. Many indic languages simply don't have good monospace fonts. It's not easy to design. They stick out in code, as a result.

But I've always wondered if allowing three or four different widths would help. We could still align text if (narrow) spaces were the smallest unit, and other widths were repeated multiples of that.

This makes me think it's doable.

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