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Hermit: a font for programmers, by a programmer

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

#101

Post by harlanlewis »

bitwize wrote: post #38
crazygringo wrote: post #20

> 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…

> 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.

Legibility isn't the same as readability. ALL CAPS is highly legible, and so are freeway billboards - neither are optimized for high comprehension, high speed, and minimal fatigue during extended sessions.

For example, exaggerating key elements on select glyphs (compare Glass TTY's counter in '4' to AutoCAD's Big Type '4', or the beak on '1') can help at-a-glance perception of plotter output, but exhaust quickly in longer documents.

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

#102

Post by kaplejon »

This font will drive a dyslexic programmer mad.

I want to like this font. I love the theory and craft behind its creation. And it will no doubt work for some people (just reading through the comments that is obvious).

But from the first view, and at all pt sizes, something felt a little off-kilter. It took me longer to read through the lorem ipsum and other sample text. I had to focus more at the individual characters, which is perhaps exactly the opposite of the goal. And I think this was even magnified by the monospacing.

This font is clean. Nicely designed. But again, it will not work for a dyslexic programmer. The rules became restrictive, forced a little too much individual, systematic design, without looking at the whole.

What I mean is that too many characters are weighted in such a way that it fights the character's basic orientation. The '8', '9', 'e', 'a', and many others, pull themselves down. I 'feel' them swinging on their axis and hanging upside down. I feel other letter's rotating around a vertical axis. The letters feel unbalanced, sitting uneasy on one axis or another. The characters were so over-engineered, I'm not sure they have soul.

But there are many fonts out there, and just because this will not work for some people isn't reason enough to say it won't anybody. Kudos to the effort and experimentation.

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

#103

Post by shubb »

VLM wrote: post #37
shubb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I don't know if you ever find yourself in a situation where you can't avoid eclipse. The tabbarmenuwindow problem is truly horrible.

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

#104

Post by sdkmvx »

geophile wrote: post #70
crazygringo wrote: post #20

> 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…

Respect. All that said, this font looks pretty good to me as a programmer, (12 point version, at least), and I'm going to try it out when it's available. I've been looking for a good font to use in emacs on OS X and have never found one that I liked. (On Linux, my preference is 9x15.)

If you like the X11 Fixed fonts, check out http://monkey.org/~marius/beautiful-fixed-width-fonts-for-os..., which provides 6x13, 7x14, 9x15 and 10x20 in OS X dfont format.

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

#105

Post by chengiz »

I do not like the Courier style "m" with unequal gap. Also the t and f bar not crossing on the left. Makes the gaps look large with the succeeding letter, notice potato at small point.

The x-height is too small, makes some letters undifferentiable at small size.

Also if it's programming, need more examples. For example ( next to <.

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

#106

Post by cscheid »

bolder88 wrote: post #90
asolove wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important not to oversell the touchy-feely/what-looks-good side of this. Font design is certainly about planning and calculation, it's just that those calculations need to be based on optics rather than geometry. Instead of perfect circles, we use a shape that is taller than it is wide; instead of splitting the space in half, cross-strokes should be higher than the middle; different strokes need to be different…

Possibly related, the fact that when you hang a door, the gap between the top hinge and the top of the door, should be smaller than the gap between the bottom hinge and the floor. This makes the door spacing look equal from our usual standing position. What sounds good on paper/design (Make the spacing equidistant) can often look terrible in practice. I think the font looks ok, but the "d" looks bad to me. And I'm no…

Similarly, I once heard a story that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(Michelangelo) has a bigger head than usual because people would be looking at it from a funny perspective, and foreshortening would make it look strange if the proportions were not changed.

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

#107

Post by enjoy-your-stay »

alipang wrote: post #36
crazygringo wrote: post #20

> 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...

I have to agree, I thought it looks pretty nice too - and for what appears to be his first ever attempt - event better.

Just a shame the '8' character looks a bit like an upside down snowman is all I would add.

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

#108

Post by fragsworth »

dubcanada wrote: post #81

Besides picking apart small issues like the u and m and proportions, I think my main issue seems to be that your website does not showcase the font anywhere besides screenshots at the very bottom. People don't care about your story, updates, information, etc (as much). They want to see your font. Make it shown at the very top so I don't have to scroll 3 pages to see a screenshot link. Take a look at how other font pe…

> Besides picking apart small issues like the u and m and kerning,

Kerning? It's a monospace font. You don't kern monospace fonts.

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

#110

Post by chc »

criley2 wrote: post #100
ameen wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Role reversal considering how it used to be just a few months ago.

A weird role reversal. Many of the tech communities on Reddit are garbage. Then again, my first question upon seeing this on HN was "how on earth is this relevant/interesting? It's not even finished!" so discovering that the source for the submission was a tech subreddit is unsurprising.

From what I've seen, /r/programming is about as bad as any. But people read it anyway because there isn't really a better programming subreddit. (Some of the very specialized ones are better, like for specific languages, but the wide-audience subreddits seem to be full of people who do not have much experience and are more interested in one-upmanship than in talking shop.)
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