I love monospace. Has to be early computing experiences working a lot like music does in our early life.
Nice work. Many very readable examples for others to draw on.
The Monospace Web
81–90 of 159 posts
Re: The Monospace Web
#82Ooh, this is the thread to ask my question in. A few years ago I ran across a ... I think a video game walkthrough? maybe? which was written to be read in monospace font, and it was full justified perfectly all the way through (thousands of lines!) SOLELY through word choice. Anyone know what I'm talking about and have a link?
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?
Re: The Monospace Web
#83Super cool! Love how nice the tree-list looks! Readability with monospace is always a bit troubling, but I think this is a great take on it :)
I made a similar thing where I take semantic HTML and render it as old RFC documents: https://vladde.net/blog/rfc-css/ (not as readable though IMO)
Re: The Monospace Web
#84I'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.
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 omnipresent top-right oblique ribbon of yesterdecade or, even better, the little badges we used at the turn of the century), then we make a central list where people can add their website.
Re: The Monospace Web
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's called bricktext[0], it used to be a thing you'd occasionally see on usenet and places like GameFAQs. [0] http://www.catb.org/esr/jargon/html/B/bricktext.html (Also wow Google has completely erased this concept from its search results.)
oh my god that person wrote "The Art of Unix Programming" I binge read it last week and it was exceptional. What a world. These are the kind of people that I look up to and aspire to be like.
That person (Eric S. Raymond) also wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"[0], a seminal work for the Open Source movement.
Re: The Monospace Web
#862024 and no light mode?
It uses your browser settings for light/dark mode. I'm seeing a light mode version on my machine.
Re: The Monospace Web
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's called bricktext[0], it used to be a thing you'd occasionally see on usenet and places like GameFAQs. [0] http://www.catb.org/esr/jargon/html/B/bricktext.html (Also wow Google has completely erased this concept from its search results.)
oh my god that person wrote "The Art of Unix Programming" I binge read it last week and it was exceptional. What a world. These are the kind of people that I look up to and aspire to be like.
just came here to say your post makes me feel old. esr was a classic a cool 20 years ago. enjoy!
Re: The Monospace Web
#88Typography is so difficult on the web due to lack of support for things CSS textbox-trim https://github.com/jantimon/text-box-trim-examples You can see that even on this website, if you click "Debug Mode" (top right) and notice that later in the page, the headings and body copy begin to drift out of vertical alignment (against the background grid).
Wow something Safari has already built and others haven’t.
Re: The Monospace Web
#89I’m using monospace for my homepage and for many of my projects (I had a custom font made express for my ASCII experiments!).
But I disagree with the claim that monospaced fonts are easier to read, especially for longer texts and writings. The monotone rhythm will tire the eye, eventually.
Side note: the CSS “ch” unit can be handy to build monospaced layouts.
Re: The Monospace Web
#90Alright, before I continue my comment. I love the look and overall feel of the website. From an aesthetics point of view, I think it looks awesome. However... this sentence
> Maybe we’re just brainwashed from spending years in terminals?
Made me go ... Ugh...
Yes, I very much think so. To be fair, they do a fairly good job with the monospaced font they are using on this website, which is fairly legible. They also seem to actually have put thought into it, other than just doing monospaced fonts for aesthetics.
But, if your main content is semi long form text, then a monospaced font is simply not a good choice. Certainly not when the majority of people who use it on their blog don't give it nearly as much thought and attention as the author of this website.
I know many people on HN don't see it as an issue, certainly not people responding in this thread. However, there are decades worth of research into typography and typesetting on displays that makes it clear that a sans serif font (or even a serif font on modern displays) works better for readability. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯