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Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

berkeleygraphics.com

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Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#41

Post by brirec »

superkuh wrote: post #34
amake wrote: post #26

To all the people complaining about how they don't like ligatures: Nobody cares. If you don't like them, then don't use them. They are optional. Lots of people like them. Let people like things.

Let blind people's text to speech readers read things. If you're printing it out, or you know it's for limited use digitally, go for it. But if you expect the public at large to read the digital text please make it text to speech accessible: no ligatures.

Ligatures (the kind mentioned in TFA) are inserted at the font rendering level. Screen readers don't even know ligatures exist, because the server sends ordinary characters that your browser's engine then groups into (and replaces with) ligatures as defined by the font itself.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#42

Post by kitsunesoba »

KronisLV wrote: post #12
AJRF wrote: post #4

I paid for this font. I can't believe it, but I just kept coming back to the webpage every week thinking "Aww dang its nice, but no way would I ever pay $75 for a font for personal use". But I kept coming back. Again and again, just looking through their page. I tried the trial. I eventually caved. A weird moment for me, but I bloody love this font and I frequently notice how nice it is in all my IDEs. I sound like a…

Personally, I've stuck with free fonts most of the time. For programming, currently I tend to use: Liberation Mono: from the very same package of fonts that are included in LibreOffice, I find it to be surprisingly readable and easy on the eyes for most kinds of code or monospaced text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts PT Mono: while initially I really liked PT Sans and PT Serif separately (they're curre…

PT Mono was my goto for a long time. For the past few years I've been running Dank Mono[0].

The Liberation font don't look bad but their wideness as well as that of other common FOSS fonts like the Vera/Bitstream fonts has always bugged me for some reason. Whenever I do a fresh Linux install and the desktop is configured to use one of those I have to download and install Inter UI or Ubuntu Sans as the UI font for it to not bug me.

[0]: https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono [1]: https://rsms.me/inter/ [2]: https://design.ubuntu.com/font

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#43

Post by filmgirlcw »

jswny wrote: post #15

With a paid font like this, what’s the story for supporting Nerd front icons and power line icons?

You can do it manually if you take it on yourself and offer a patcher that people who own the font can use. But most of the time, it is not going to be aesthetically pleasing to the font designer.

This is what Berkeley Graphics says about it in the article that is linked:

>Nerd Fonts: We don't mind our customers patching the typeface. We respect your ownership of the typeface. However, Nerd Fonts are put together [haphazardly](https://www.nerdfonts.com/#home_) from several difference sources, kind of destroys our typeface's cohesiveness: We do not endorse it, we don't provide support to do this. It is a bad idea despite of its questionable usefulness. They're popular though and if you don't mind breaking the aesthetic uniformity of our typefaces, please go for it.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#44

Post by amake »

superkuh wrote: post #34
amake wrote: post #26

To all the people complaining about how they don't like ligatures: Nobody cares. If you don't like them, then don't use them. They are optional. Lots of people like them. Let people like things.

Let blind people's text to speech readers read things. If you're printing it out, or you know it's for limited use digitally, go for it. But if you expect the public at large to read the digital text please make it text to speech accessible: no ligatures.

The ligatures discussed are implemented at the rendering level. The byte sequence of text is unchanged vs the "no ligature" scenario. So this has zero impact on screen readers.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#45

Post by shagie »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #37
AJRF wrote: post #4

I paid for this font. I can't believe it, but I just kept coming back to the webpage every week thinking "Aww dang its nice, but no way would I ever pay $75 for a font for personal use". But I kept coming back. Again and again, just looking through their page. I tried the trial. I eventually caved. A weird moment for me, but I bloody love this font and I frequently notice how nice it is in all my IDEs. I sound like a…

I just did the exact same thing. I've been thinking about it since it was first on Show HN a year ago. And I kept putting it off. Today they got me. And this isn't even the first monospaced font I've spent money on that I know I will probably not always use. I own Operator. Dank. Mono Lisa. But the design and the attention to detail with downloading as regards to the stylistic set defaults (for applications that don'…

Dank mono annoys me except in one spot - conference presentation slides (where it still annoys me, but I can see it being useful). The italics as cursive is annoying - especially with the 's' that shows up in too many places.

However, the difficulty of distinguishing italics from regular on a presentation I can mostly forgive it since I can now recognize the italics and that hint to whatever it is trying to show much more easily than if I was trying to figure out a color (I'm not color blind but that is an accessibility issue) or the 'is that tilted enough?'

(and looking for a bit of nostalgia, https://dank.sh/ now redirects to https://philpl.gumroad.com/l/dank-mono and while its done, it can be purchased again!)

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#47

Post by layer8 »

huhtenberg wrote: post #8
AJRF wrote: post #4

I paid for this font. I can't believe it, but I just kept coming back to the webpage every week thinking "Aww dang its nice, but no way would I ever pay $75 for a font for personal use". But I kept coming back. Again and again, just looking through their page. I tried the trial. I eventually caved. A weird moment for me, but I bloody love this font and I frequently notice how nice it is in all my IDEs. I sound like a…

The website is fantastic. Font looks great and samples are an eye candy, so tried it just now. Windows, 1920 x 1200 @ 96 dpi, Visual Studio, light-on-dark theme. I like 'em small to fit more on the screen and at 8px this font looks janky. It is blurry with uneven thickness and requires an eye strain to read. It doesn't seem to be hinted at all even though it is a TTF version. Here's Berkley Mono on the left and Mensc…

Mensch presumably is this font: https://robey.lag.net/2010/06/21/mensch-font.html

I’ll have to try it. I’m still using Lucida Console because most newer fonts lack hinting for smaller sizes.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#48

Post by layer8 »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #38
huhtenberg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The website is fantastic. Font looks great and samples are an eye candy, so tried it just now. Windows, 1920 x 1200 @ 96 dpi, Visual Studio, light-on-dark theme. I like 'em small to fit more on the screen and at 8px this font looks janky. It is blurry with uneven thickness and requires an eye strain to read. It doesn't seem to be hinted at all even though it is a TTF version. Here's Berkley Mono on the left and Mensc…

This is one of the reasons why I'm hoping to sometime this year upgrade my main monitor to something with high pixel density that is practical to run with integer scaling: super crisp text with any size and font. Text doesn't look terrible on my current 27" 2560x1440 monitor with a font that's designed for it, but it's a far cry from the same text on my MBP screen.

I’m waiting for a 27" 4K monitor with better-than-IPS contrast (i.e. VA or OLED) to use at 200% DPI, to replace a 1920x1200. With WQHD (2560x1440) I have the problem that 1-pixel stems are too thin for my eyes, 2-pixel stems are too big (font gets too large relative to screen size), and everything in between is blurry.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#49

Post by epgui »

neilpanchal wrote: post #28
chilie wrote: post #20

Am I alone in disliking ligatures? I want a font that displays the characters I type in exactly the form I type them. I really don't see the appeal.

We talked about ligatures in-depth in BT-001 bulletin: https://berkeleygraphics.com/public-affairs/bulletins/BT-001... In short, we think 1 keypress = 1 symbol printed on the screen. That explicitness brings peace. But, we also think that ligatures are optional and many people like them (read about all the pros and cons in the link above). That makes everyone happy.

> and many people like them

I love them and can barely tolerate not having them. These ligatures of yours filled my heart with joy. Thank you!

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#50

Post by ggm »

smlacy wrote: post #32

Signed up for the "free trial" font (for personal use) and was particularly disappointed by this: Please note that the trial version has the following limitations: * Limited to ASCII-128 character set * Missing '7' and 'S' glyphs * Swapped: '/' and '\', '\*' and '#'

It's not uncommon for free trials to do things like this. I've used video edit suites which will edit a 5min clip but no more, which watermark the output, which show the edit stream but won't save it.

Personally, I think this is fine. They are pretty explicit this is try before you buy checking it works. Not "use it free for 30 days and then we nag you" fully operational.

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