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Monaspace

monaspace.githubnext.com

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Re: Monaspace

#111

Post by a_e_k »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #81
layer8 wrote: post #42

No hinting apparently, so only for hi-DPI.

That's all I need to know about this font. There is no point in cranking out yet another code font that doesn't have hinting. PragmataPro and Berkeley Mono are such well loved fonts not because of their aesthetic quality (code fonts are (proudly) ugly), but because of how well their hinting has been done. If I want an unhinted, but well performing, font... there is Iosevka. Which I use.

If you're interested in a free, but carefully hinted coding font, my Luculent font [0][1] may be worth a look. The hinting is its defining feature, since I hate fuzzy font rendering. I wrote every line of TTF hinting code in it myself (no autohinting), and it is legible down to 5x11 pixel sized characters even if you disable antialiasing, so long as your font engine interprets the hints.

[0] http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/

[1] https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/luculent (live example in browser)

Re: Monaspace

#113

Post by zokier »

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.

So many people here are now praising texture healing, but to me its just half-way measure. Why are we as a community so resistant for adopting variable-width fonts? This texture healing already breaks perfect character cell grid, so in some ways it feels like worst of both worlds.

I feel at least partially the same about fancy ligatures; we could just use the actual characters in source code, Unicode is widely supported. Raku does that, but it would need better typesetting (with variable-width fonts) to really shine.

Re: Monaspace

#114

Post by lionkor »

zokier wrote: post #113
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.

So many people here are now praising texture healing, but to me its just half-way measure. Why are we as a community so resistant for adopting variable-width fonts? This texture healing already breaks perfect character cell grid, so in some ways it feels like worst of both worlds. I feel at least partially the same about fancy ligatures; we could just use the actual characters in source code, Unicode is widely suppor…

thats not what it does - it maintains monoSPACE while chaning the characters to not look the same width -- the best of both worlds, if anything

Re: Monaspace

#115

Post by bitwize »

GuB-42 wrote: post #52
thrtythreeforty wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 so…

Also, according to Don Knuth himself: "Asking an artist to become enough of a mathematician to understand how to write a font with 60 parameters is too much".

More like, asking a mathematician to become enough of a typographer to design a font that looks clean and consistent and actually aids reading is too much.

Real typographers know that the Computer Modern family is garbage.

Re: Monaspace

#117

Post by sreetamdas »

jskherman wrote: post #79

I'm bothered by the Rd symbol of Radon on the page, it's should be Rn. It makes me double-check if there's actually an element that's not Radium (Ra), not Radon (Rn), but also starts with an R and has a d in its name.

Noticed this too, it's been since fixed :)

Re: Monaspace

#119

Post by SonOfLilit »

zokier wrote: post #113
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.

So many people here are now praising texture healing, but to me its just half-way measure. Why are we as a community so resistant for adopting variable-width fonts? This texture healing already breaks perfect character cell grid, so in some ways it feels like worst of both worlds. I feel at least partially the same about fancy ligatures; we could just use the actual characters in source code, Unicode is widely suppor…

I hate ligatures in code.

It sometimes breaks out of the grid, but there still is a grid. Things are sometimes not micro-aligned but still macro-aligned, and that matters (to me).

Re: Monaspace

#120

Post by SonOfLilit »

fomine3 wrote: post #118

Anyone could explain why *** ligature exists?

I'm guessing they'd say "because it looks nicer". I'm not aware of a language that treats it specially.

I do think I've seen it before, I don't think it's a new idea. Probably some typographic tradition from when it was used as a section separator in prose.

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