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The Monospace Web

owickstrom.github.io

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121–130 of 159 posts

Re: The Monospace Web

#121

Post by Shugyousha »

kristopolous wrote: post #45
wonger_ wrote: post #24

I've been keeping a list of monospace pages: https://wonger.dev/posts/monospace-dump#web . Currently have ~50. Spacing is a challenge. And you lose some legibility giving up proportional fonts. I think kerning in proportional fonts makes a big difference, letting your eyes recognize the shape of different letter groupings. Monospace text is fine if you avoid long-form text, like when it's structured and highlighted i…

maybe there needs to be a gopher protocol refresh. some 2024 approach of the same idea.

Have you heard about https://geminiprotocol.net/ ?

Re: The Monospace Web

#122

Post by notpushkin »

layer8 wrote: post #22
usually wrote: post #16

It looks nice, and I'm glad that it's semantic and responsive, but the fundamental problem is that monospace just isn't great for body text. I've read blog posts on multiple sites with monospaced body text, it's okay, but proportional really is the way to go in my opinion.

Agreed. It has started bothering me for authoring Markdown documents as well, where it’s often impractical to avoid monospace.

I like monospace for writing Markdown. I can't point finger on why exactly, but it feels like a manuscript or something. (Although iA folks have quantified this a bit: https://ia.net/topics/in-search-of-the-perfect-writing-font)

Conversely, for reading Markdown, I prefer a rendered version in a proportional font.

Re: The Monospace Web

#123

Post by notpushkin »

mxstbr wrote: post #58

I was thinking about changing my personal website's font to a monospaced one. Anybody know which ones are particularly good for long-form text readability? Bonus points if it's on Google Fonts.

Aside, but please consider using https://fontsource.org/ instead of Google Fonts: just as easy to use, and no tracking (at least from Google).

Re: The Monospace Web

#124

Post by upofadown »

0xEF wrote: post #98
usually wrote: post #16

It looks nice, and I'm glad that it's semantic and responsive, but the fundamental problem is that monospace just isn't great for body text. I've read blog posts on multiple sites with monospaced body text, it's okay, but proportional really is the way to go in my opinion.

Out of curiosity, what font would you prefer for body text? I use monospace on my own blog because it plays nice with my poor vision and scaling settings, but I am always curious about improved readability for all, since accesability is important to me.

I think it depends on what you mean by "readability". Proportional squeezes more text into the same space. So you get more of it per eye fixation and as a result can read faster and/or exert less effort for the same amount of text. Monospaced puts everything in a grid and makes it easier to distinguish one character from another. So you get fewer errors due to the characters bleeding into one another. So mono works better when legibility is an issue.

So both have better "readability" in different ways. Faster/easier or more accurate. Which implies to me at least that mono is better for everything but body text even when things are ideal. I don't think it is possible to have a single proportional font that works for both definitions of the word "readability".

Re: The Monospace Web

#125

Post by javier_e06 »

TOM QVAXY I took industrial design back in the day where there was no cad. With had to space manually the letters above and crunch them to make the title pleasant to the eye. Steady hand a sense of proportion where key to pass the test with ratio rulers and Rotring mechanical pencils in hand.

My favorite font is Terminus for my code and whatever the New York Times Magazine font is for reading.

But when it comes to get the message across....Papirus.

Re: The Monospace Web

#126

Post by aarreedd »

tasuki wrote: post #82
aarreedd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laravel does something similar. Each line of multi-line comments are exactly 3 characters shorter than the previous line. https://github.com/laravel/laravel/blob/11.x/config/database...

Wow, this is amazing! Just in that file or everywhere? Why? How do they enforce this for all the contributors who might be unaware?

Pretty much everywhere. I guess to demonstrate the framework's attention to detail, craftsmanship, etc. No clue

Re: The Monospace Web

#128

Post by Dalewyn »

klez wrote: post #84
kristopolous wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe there needs to be a gopher protocol refresh. some 2024 approach of the same idea.

The problem is not really with the protocol or the file formats, though. I gave this some thought in the past, and, since this is more of an artistic/crafting endavor than anything else I'd say we decide on some arbitrary rules (like "only monospace fonts, no external javascript, only static content", I don't know, I'm just spitballing here) and create our own certification to display at the top of the page (like the…

>"only monospace fonts, no external javascript, only static content"

So most of the Japanese amateur internet? :V

(CJK fonts are mostly monospace.)

Re: The Monospace Web

#130

Post by sham1 »

notpushkin wrote: post #123
mxstbr wrote: post #58

I was thinking about changing my personal website's font to a monospaced one. Anybody know which ones are particularly good for long-form text readability? Bonus points if it's on Google Fonts.

Aside, but please consider using https://fontsource.org/ instead of Google Fonts: just as easy to use, and no tracking (at least from Google).

To be fair, the person could still use Google Fonts, but just download the font and host it themselves. The font licenses allow this.

You get the upsides of being able to pick a nice font from Google Fonts while not having the downside of tracking. It also helps with caching! And also prevents the font from disappearing for no reason.

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