Setting aside the other ways AI is upending society, I absolutely love how we can all share and build on simple artifacts and micro-apps now that can be built entirely from our brain's vision expressed in plain English.
Wow, I didn't really expect to see my project there this morning! I'm normally a simple lurker, but I wanted to say thanks for the kind words about the project.
I know some people might want to modify or tweak the project to their liking. The project is meant to provide a Python sandbox more than just font files, so feel free to fork it or submit a PR if you feel like some glyphs need tweaking! You don't need any external tools to draw/visualize the glyphs.
It's a bit like the paid font Berkeley Mono which I've been using for a while now. But I think Nordwand feels softer and nicer, it embodies a message in the font (thus the fluency effect is more potent).
The message may be subjective but it strikes me as: "I, the font, contain important data [due to the sharp curvatures and uniform size of letter elements]. Not sure if others think about fonts in this way.
Berkeley Mono's message to me feels like "I'm just doing my job, don't mind me, focus on your thing".
> Berkeley Mono's message to me feels like "I'm just doing my job, don't mind me, focus on your thing".
It's a font inspired by older terminals and "no nonsense" hardware of that era. I put its design philosophy as "it's so good that it's invisible". Using it for years now, and it feels natural and neutral.
With Gruvbox dark, it really feels like I'm using an old terminal. Like how I like it.
I have been going back and forth between Luxi Mono (serif monospace fonts are rare but look great on high-resolution monitors) and Hack (like Helvetica, it has virtually no personality and thus fits well everywhere). Everything else I've seen has looked... weird or off somehow. But this is one of the first alternatives I'm entertaining the idea of trying.
My main concern is that the tall glyphs for less than < and greater than > will disambiguate badly with actual Unicode left 〈 and right angle brackets 〉.
Edit: I also realised just now the ASCII hyphen-minus - is quite long with this typeface, which makes it ambiguous with the longer dashes. (It looks freakin' great in pure ASCII environments, though!)
Nice work. I unfortunately wouldn't be able to use it for programming because I find the parenthesis and square bracket look too similar, and it would definitely increase extraneous cognitive load.
Most likely. People are throwing LLMs at everything and seeing what sticks.
As one YouTuber said: it's the first time we can create (somewhat) coherent, context dependent and new content using something else than other humans.
I can't say I'm too keen on wading through piles of crap, I'm also not keen on the AI bubble and its popping nor on AI's impact on employment, but if we survive all of this, we might end up with a lot of new stuff that could actually be good. 1% of this garbage will be good, but since the entire pile will be so large, that 1% might double or more our options in various fields.
Funny, I found this font last week on the programming fonts website before it blew up. Was using IoskeleyMono before, and think this is my endgame for now! Amazing readable font.
Brilliant project. The face looks good. The code looks good. It’s nice to see it in Python too. I don’t especially love the language but I have a great fondness for seeing life things codified with a standard API in a typed (or at least, type-able) language. Needing to draw an “A” in something without having to pull in font libraries (that is to say passing a compatible draw context to this project’s LowercaseAGlyph.draw) sounds nice.
Y'know, I didn't think anything was gonna pull me away from Iosevka but... here we are. Gonna give this a real go. Helping its case is that it looks a bit like Berkeley Mono.
`Only two minimal ligatures are exposed with "->" and "=>".`
I like that, I usually have ligatures turned off, because I don't like all of them, especially the ones for == or ===. (Otoh I do like != ligatures...) but I do like the arrows.
This is probably were somebody tells me how easy it is to configure singular ligatures on a font and I'll facepalm in embarrassment for never finding out.
I hate all of them with a passion, because they look like a glyph (i.e. "something you can erase with a single backspace") but aren't. This confuses me first, and annoys me second. "Just because we could" doesn't mean that we should.
Imagine having to use Backspace twice to erase e.g. Ö or Ñ, or being able to place your cursor halfway inside Æ.
Thanks for mentioning it! First time I heard about Commit Mono. The first paragraph already had me wondering how a monospace font can read this well.
Turns out it has smart kerning, ie. character positions are subtly adjusted to compensate for different character widths. For example, i is narrow and m is wide. That causes words like "commit" to look bad in standard monospace fonts. The m's in the middle are very densely spaced and there are wide gaps around the i.
I'll be testing Commit Mono in my editors. Maybe it will even make me switch SilverBullet back to a monospace config.
I don't know if there is some sarcasm here. I was intrigued by the "smart kerning" feature mentioned but with both that very low contrast ratio and the small text size, I can't really see a thing on that website.
LE: Ok, so it's a little more different that JetBrains Mono as this comparison shows https://claude.ai/artifact/HPiALZ7AZ2f5FxSZtcTdNa
That's a really fun tool.
I know some people might want to modify or tweak the project to their liking. The project is meant to provide a Python sandbox more than just font files, so feel free to fork it or submit a PR if you feel like some glyphs need tweaking! You don't need any external tools to draw/visualize the glyphs.
The message may be subjective but it strikes me as: "I, the font, contain important data [due to the sharp curvatures and uniform size of letter elements]. Not sure if others think about fonts in this way.
Berkeley Mono's message to me feels like "I'm just doing my job, don't mind me, focus on your thing".
It's a font inspired by older terminals and "no nonsense" hardware of that era. I put its design philosophy as "it's so good that it's invisible". Using it for years now, and it feels natural and neutral.
With Gruvbox dark, it really feels like I'm using an old terminal. Like how I like it.
And who isn't?
Squints - m is too weird - tab closed :)
Bitch please… https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font.
https://github.com/tywr/Nordwand-Mono/blob/main/src/glyphs/n...
https://github.com/shytikov/pragmasevka
My main concern is that the tall glyphs for less than < and greater than > will disambiguate badly with actual Unicode left 〈 and right angle brackets 〉.
Edit: I also realised just now the ASCII hyphen-minus - is quite long with this typeface, which makes it ambiguous with the longer dashes. (It looks freakin' great in pure ASCII environments, though!)
(although I'll keep using Fira)
[1]: https://usgraphics.com/products/berkeley-mono
As one YouTuber said: it's the first time we can create (somewhat) coherent, context dependent and new content using something else than other humans.
I can't say I'm too keen on wading through piles of crap, I'm also not keen on the AI bubble and its popping nor on AI's impact on employment, but if we survive all of this, we might end up with a lot of new stuff that could actually be good. 1% of this garbage will be good, but since the entire pile will be so large, that 1% might double or more our options in various fields.
https://github.com/ahatem/IoskeleyMono
Pdf preview doesn't work on GitHub.
I see repeated posts on various fonts these days and I would like to try them.
Is manual installation the only option?
I like that, I usually have ligatures turned off, because I don't like all of them, especially the ones for == or ===. (Otoh I do like != ligatures...) but I do like the arrows.
This is probably were somebody tells me how easy it is to configure singular ligatures on a font and I'll facepalm in embarrassment for never finding out.
[1] https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge
I hate all of them with a passion, because they look like a glyph (i.e. "something you can erase with a single backspace") but aren't. This confuses me first, and annoys me second. "Just because we could" doesn't mean that we should.
Imagine having to use Backspace twice to erase e.g. Ö or Ñ, or being able to place your cursor halfway inside Æ.
Turns out it has smart kerning, ie. character positions are subtly adjusted to compensate for different character widths. For example, i is narrow and m is wide. That causes words like "commit" to look bad in standard monospace fonts. The m's in the middle are very densely spaced and there are wide gaps around the i.
I'll be testing Commit Mono in my editors. Maybe it will even make me switch SilverBullet back to a monospace config.