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Monaspace

monaspace.githubnext.com

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Re: Monaspace

#11

Post by idan »

helix278 wrote: post #6

How would you configure a text editor or terminal to use different fonts based on syntax (e.g. neon for code, argon for comments)?

Hi! I worked on this at Next.

Unfortunately, it's on the editor to support mixing fonts. There's never been multiple compatible monospaced fonts before so no editors really support this yet. Lots of editors also don't support variable typefaces properly yet (ahem, VS Code) but this is going to change.

Ultimately what you're describing is the future! But we have to release the typefaces to bootstrap that future.

We made a prototype extension that hack it into VS Code. But they're hacky af and not really releasable.

Re: Monaspace

#12

Post by idan »

turnsout wrote: post #4

The "Texture Healing" feature is a really smart use of OpenType features to make problematic monospace combinations look much better without breaking the grid at all. One naive way to do this would be to create ligature pairs for difficult pairs (mi, lm, etc). But instead, they seem to be selecting character alternates that fill the fixed width differently based on their surroundings.

It really is super clever! And the crazy part is that it's been possible for a super long time, just nobody thought of the technique. Mad props to Riley Cran and the entire crew at https://lettermatic.com for devising this technique as a part of this project.

Re: Monaspace

#13

Post by csande17 »

I'm curious what people think of the "Mix & Match" examples.

Radon (the handwriting one) seems to complement the other fonts well because it's basically an italic. But all the others are so similar, with their identical metrics and whatnot, that the "authoritative docstrings" and "Copilot voice" examples are really hard to distinguish.

Re: Monaspace

#14

Post by ctenb »

idan wrote: post #11
helix278 wrote: post #6

How would you configure a text editor or terminal to use different fonts based on syntax (e.g. neon for code, argon for comments)?

Hi! I worked on this at Next. Unfortunately, it's on the editor to support mixing fonts. There's never been multiple compatible monospaced fonts before so no editors really support this yet. Lots of editors also don't support variable typefaces properly yet (ahem, VS Code) but this is going to change. Ultimately what you're describing is the future! But we have to release the typefaces to bootstrap that future. We ma…

I wonder if terminal escape code sequences would arise to support this too!

Re: Monaspace

#15

Post by csande17 »

idan wrote: post #12
turnsout wrote: post #4

The "Texture Healing" feature is a really smart use of OpenType features to make problematic monospace combinations look much better without breaking the grid at all. One naive way to do this would be to create ligature pairs for difficult pairs (mi, lm, etc). But instead, they seem to be selecting character alternates that fill the fixed width differently based on their surroundings.

It really is super clever! And the crazy part is that it's been possible for a super long time, just nobody thought of the technique. Mad props to Riley Cran and the entire crew at https://lettermatic.com for devising this technique as a part of this project.

I'm curious: did the team consider applying the technique to letter pairs like Ty and TA that traditionally get kerned closer together in proportional fonts?

As far as I can tell from the demo, these pairs currently aren't affected by texture healing, and they look a little awkward in Radon especially.

Re: Monaspace

#16

Post by itishappy »

I like everything about this! Font families seem like an incredible idea that I'm surprised nobody's done before, variable fonts are new to me and super interesting, textural healing seems like a huge step forward, and damn if that isn't one of the smoothest sites I've ever played with. Nice work!

Re: Monaspace

#17

Post by thrtythreeforty »

itishappy wrote: post #16

I like everything about this! Font families seem like an incredible idea that I'm surprised nobody's done before, variable fonts are new to me and super interesting, textural healing seems like a huge step forward, and damn if that isn't one of the smoothest sites I've ever played with. Nice work!

> Font families seem like an incredible idea that I'm surprised nobody's done before

Oh this has been done for decades. Metafont (by the inimitable Don Knuth) let you describe glyphs as toolpaths in code. You could have as many parameters as you wanted; I've seen examples where a sans-serif is smoothly swept into a serif.

Metafont never got adopted as much as I would have hoped; the lack of a graphical editor and some impedance mismatch with OpenType probably prevented its wider adoption.

Re: Monaspace

#18

Post by nvartolomei »

turnsout wrote: post #4

The "Texture Healing" feature is a really smart use of OpenType features to make problematic monospace combinations look much better without breaking the grid at all. One naive way to do this would be to create ligature pairs for difficult pairs (mi, lm, etc). But instead, they seem to be selecting character alternates that fill the fixed width differently based on their surroundings.

Commit Mono font does something similar and calls it “Smart kerning”. Visit https://commitmono.com/ and click on the “04 Intelligent” tab for details.

In practice this is unusable. Because the width of the letters now depends on the succeeding character, the text jumps as you write it. Super annoying.

Cool for reading. Awful for writing.

Re: Monaspace

#19

Post by samus »

Texture healing is a really smart and beautiful idea! I will try to apply it to Chinese handwriting, which is often monospace. A lot of common, but really dense characters (especially traditional ones, for example these: 邊鐵餐廳臺藥機麵顧露樓幫讓) could benefit from receiving additionally space to spread out.
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