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Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

pcaro.es

31–40 of 195 posts

Re: Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

#31

It's hard for me to imagine ever finding anything better than Ubuntu Mono, but for those who haven't found a love of their font-life, now might be a helpful time to relink to the one slant article I ever saw: http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming...

I like Ubuntu Mono too, but only in terminal. However for IDE I cant find anything better than Consolas.

Re: Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

#32

It's hard for me to imagine ever finding anything better than Ubuntu Mono, but for those who haven't found a love of their font-life, now might be a helpful time to relink to the one slant article I ever saw: http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming...

I'm using DejaVu Sans Mono and for me it looks cleaner on 11pt than Ubuntu Mono, but you're right: that article is amazing.

I'm surprised how close is DejaVu Sans Mono to Source Code Pro.

Re: Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

#34

It's hard for me to imagine ever finding anything better than Ubuntu Mono, but for those who haven't found a love of their font-life, now might be a helpful time to relink to the one slant article I ever saw: http://www.slant.co/topics/67/~what-are-the-best-programming...

I'm quite partial to Liberation Mono, myself. But in looking at it side-by-side, it's very similar to Ubuntu Mono.

Liberation: http://cl.ly/image/2y2E3m211H1V/Image%202013-09-09%20at%2010...

Ubuntu: http://cl.ly/image/000u0s3E2b2V/Image%202013-09-09%20at%2010...

Re: Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

#35
Looks good to me but I think I would prefer if the cross bars (eg: on t and f) actually crossed the vertical lines a little bit. Also that upper hook on the f looks somewhat comical.

Great job though. I could definitely put this font to use without feeling a strong urge to change it.

Re: Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

#36

> a font for programmers, by a programmer > Every glyph was carefully planned and calculated, according to defined principles and rules. For this reason, Hermit is coherent and regular. I hate to say this, but a font by a programmer makes as much sense as a database library by a font designer. Good font design is not about calculations or following principled rules; it's about what looks good to the eye, and it takes…

Wow, that's a boring attitude. I think it's great this guy is interested in typography and crafting his own fonts, and that the results are quite nice, professional or not, with the right principles or not.

Just don't get why it's on the front page before release though. I guess for comments, but add a place where I can sign up to be notified when it's done or something...

Re: Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

#37
post #15

Looks pretty good at lower sized fonts, but I regularly work in 24pt font size and it looks terrible at that size. Too bad.

I usually code around 10pt - more would mean I couldn't fit enough code on the screen... Are you talking about coding at 24pt? I'm interested why you'd do that?

Screen DPI varies widely and usually isn't correctly configured if it is at all. My main coding desktop is a little small at 14pt and probably should be a big larger. This is a pretty small monitor holds just a little more than a piece of physical paper and is driven natively at 1280x1024.

Someone with a "living room TV" sized mere 720px monitor is going to have a completely different perspective on what is too big or too small.

This is aside from the "my classes are 5000 lines long" problem which may or may not exist and may or may not be required by peculiar exceptional business needs anyway (required as opposed to being a style "problem")

And to add yet another orthogonal dimension to the problem, I code full screen using awesome as a WM... I use all of my screen for code except two text line equivalents at the top. I can see how someone who is tab bar'd menu'd windowed down at a tiny little fraction of a monitor might need a smaller font just to see anything. I've seen screens decorated up to the point that the actual content only has a post card sized space to work in, surrounded by massive unproductive clutter. They're going to need a tiny font indeed...

Re: Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

#38

> a font for programmers, by a programmer > Every glyph was carefully planned and calculated, according to defined principles and rules. For this reason, Hermit is coherent and regular. I hate to say this, but a font by a programmer makes as much sense as a database library by a font designer. Good font design is not about calculations or following principled rules; it's about what looks good to the eye, and it takes…

It literally looks like a font designed by an engineer for a plotter, not something designed for the human eye or legibility.

Plotter fonts are intended to exactly communicate important technical information. They are designed to be highly legible, irrespective of whether you think they look nice.

It's the same with old-school pixel fonts, which had to exactly communicate easily confusable glyphs, instantly, on a low-bandwidth communications channel (an 8x8 or even 9x16 monochrome character cell is very low bandwidth). So a lot of them looked butt-ugly. But they were easier for a programmer to read than if he had been doing all his code in Helvetica Neue.

That's why I do all my hacking in Glass Tty, Terminus, or good old 7x14. As for this font -- it's nice, but not Terminus nice.

Re: Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

#39
post #7

"m" doesn't seems nice http://pcaro.es/i/Hermit_10pt.png

I studied the Lorem Ipsum (thats why its there) and the "es" doesn't look so hot either next to each other. Or was that "se" hard to tell.

The designer should be proud that the worst problems that can be found by picky people who stare at screens for 12 hours a day are relatively minor and easily fixable. Its a good programming font. Once its an "apt-get" away (and what are its licensing terms? I must have missed that part) I'll probably deploy it and use it.

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