Victor Mono Typeface • Hacker News Board

Re: Victor Mono Typeface

#71

Post by enriquec » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

zare_st wrote: post #61

rubjo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typeface designer here. Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts about it. I guess the point is that it wasn’t first and foremost designed to follow as many font design principles as possible. If that’s what’s important to you, pick a font that follows as many of these principles as possible. :D In the end, I guess I don’t really care whether I use 157ms to parse a sentence instead of 158 - although to…

Well you made it explicitly for programming purposes. I am not a poll house or a public opinion evaluator. But handwritten cursive and programming I wouldn't put in a same sentence. The ligatures and the height you choose really don't go well with a lot of popular programming languages. I'm not sure what aspect of programming do you believe is "inhumane" so you have desire to introduce "humanity" through design choic…

I've been programming 20 years and I use one of these combined sans/cursive font setups. I like less legibility for certain parts of the code - like keywords/decorators that I can recognize instantly but want to skip reading/parsing when I want, for instance, to just read function names in collapsed code. I typically set stuff like this to a color closer to the BG too.

Re: Victor Mono Typeface

#72

Post by ajross » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

> I'm generally pretty supportive of new typefaces

I guess I am in the abstract, but... no, I guess I'm more "bewildered" by new typefaces. Especially mono fonts targetted at source code display.

I mean, this world just doesn't have elaborate requirements. And it was solved, like, dead-on-done-to-perfection with the open source release of Bitstream Vera two decades ago. I haven't wanted a new font since. Frankly I can barely tell the difference between most of them (not this one though -- yikes, that cursive thing is weird). I mean, why?

Why not spend your font design hours making something for general text that people might notice. Hackers are poor discriminators and frankly very well served already.

Re: Victor Mono Typeface

#73

Post by jbverschoor » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

rubjo wrote: post #69

zare_st wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you made it explicitly for programming purposes. I am not a poll house or a public opinion evaluator. But handwritten cursive and programming I wouldn't put in a same sentence. The ligatures and the height you choose really don't go well with a lot of popular programming languages. I'm not sure what aspect of programming do you believe is "inhumane" so you have desire to introduce "humanity" through design choic…

Heh well actually I made the font for my own use. Some others have liked it, others have critized features of it, like the italics and the ligatures. (Features one can easily disable in most sane editors, I might add). I’ve been using it daily ever since I made it, and I like to believe it makes me effective and happy. No one should obviously pick a font which is hard to read for them of slows them down. This font do…

What I like about it is that it makes more use of the vertical space. In programming, almost everything is lowercase or titlecase (snake/camel are the same), so I prefer to have the higher x-height. It's the most legible typeface for me, and I've tried many

Re: Victor Mono Typeface

#74

Post by dizhn » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

mizudashi wrote: post #5

Does anyone know where the use of cursive-style characters in monospace fonts originated from? (My guess would be that it came from something like Operator Mono from Hoefler & Co.) I've always found the cursive to be a little jarring, since the cursive characters usually look so different from the normal ones, and switching between cursive and normal styles makes it slower for me to visually parse a section of code.…

They are usually used for comments which people also configure to be less visible. They are sort of there when you want but do not attract attention. I suppose they also make comments look like regular prose, rather than "code".

Re: Victor Mono Typeface

#75

Post by doc_gunthrop » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 5:19 PM UTC

aaarrm wrote: post #66

crazygringo wrote: post #21

I'm generally pretty supportive of new typefaces, but this one strikes me as... not very legible. The x-height is so uncommonly high it makes it genuinely difficult to distinguish between uppercase/ascending and lowercase letters at a glance (e.g. 'U' vs 'u', or 'h' vs. 'n'), and similarly the descender is so tiny it makes it hard to distinguish certain letters at a glance (e.g. 'q' vs 'p'). The whole point of large-…

You seem to know what you're talking about, so do you have any suggestions for good font choices for programming in particular?

Not OP but there were some decent ones in the comparison box w/ the slider (such as Source Code Pro). Deja Vu Sans Mono is another good one.

Re: Victor Mono Typeface

#76

Post by layer8 » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #21

I'm generally pretty supportive of new typefaces, but this one strikes me as... not very legible. The x-height is so uncommonly high it makes it genuinely difficult to distinguish between uppercase/ascending and lowercase letters at a glance (e.g. 'U' vs 'u', or 'h' vs. 'n'), and similarly the descender is so tiny it makes it hard to distinguish certain letters at a glance (e.g. 'q' vs 'p'). The whole point of large-…

Large x-height is beneficial for low DPI (cf. Lucida Console for example), but this font doesn’t seem to have the necessary hinting for low-DPI use.

Re: Victor Mono Typeface

#77

Post by galkk » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #21

I'm generally pretty supportive of new typefaces, but this one strikes me as... not very legible. The x-height is so uncommonly high it makes it genuinely difficult to distinguish between uppercase/ascending and lowercase letters at a glance (e.g. 'U' vs 'u', or 'h' vs. 'n'), and similarly the descender is so tiny it makes it hard to distinguish certain letters at a glance (e.g. 'q' vs 'p'). The whole point of large-…

I used victor mono as primary font everywhere (vscode, idea, terminal) for very long time, and disagree with your opinion of its readability. It successfully replaced Fira Code to me. Anecdotal evidence, of course, but I want to counter the authoritative tone of your comment.

Although I’m using Iosevka now, Victor Mono was reliable work horse for me for very long time.

I found that font through coding font tournament style selector (codingfont.com).

I may miss some, but my history was Courier New - Consolas - Dejavu Sans Mono - Anonymous Pro - Azeret Mono - Fira Code - Victor Mono - Iosevka - Iosevka Slab, and if I will decide to go back, Victor Mono is going to be first choice

Re: Victor Mono Typeface

#78

Post by andreyvit » Sun, Nov 19, 2023, 5:30 PM UTC

rubjo wrote: post #45

crazygringo wrote: post #21

I'm generally pretty supportive of new typefaces, but this one strikes me as... not very legible. The x-height is so uncommonly high it makes it genuinely difficult to distinguish between uppercase/ascending and lowercase letters at a glance (e.g. 'U' vs 'u', or 'h' vs. 'n'), and similarly the descender is so tiny it makes it hard to distinguish certain letters at a glance (e.g. 'q' vs 'p'). The whole point of large-…

Typeface designer here. Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts about it. I guess the point is that it wasn’t first and foremost designed to follow as many font design principles as possible. If that’s what’s important to you, pick a font that follows as many of these principles as possible. :D In the end, I guess I don’t really care whether I use 157ms to parse a sentence instead of 158 - although to…