[HN Gopher] Monaspace
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Monaspace
Author : davidbarker
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-11-09 20:16 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (monaspace.githubnext.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (monaspace.githubnext.com)
| amerine wrote:
| It's a really cool idea to have a collection of monospaced fonts
| that work wonderfully together. I can't wait to give this a spin
| today.
| turnsout wrote:
| The "Texture Healing" feature is a really smart use of OpenType
| features to make problematic monospace combinations look much
| better without breaking the grid at all.
|
| One naive way to do this would be to create ligature pairs for
| difficult pairs (mi, lm, etc). But instead, they seem to be
| selecting character alternates that fill the fixed width
| differently based on their surroundings.
| idan wrote:
| It really is super clever! And the crazy part is that it's been
| possible for a super long time, just nobody thought of the
| technique. Mad props to Riley Cran and the entire crew at
| https://lettermatic.com for devising this technique as a part
| of this project.
| csande17 wrote:
| I'm curious: did the team consider applying the technique to
| letter pairs like Ty and TA that traditionally get kerned
| closer together in proportional fonts?
|
| As far as I can tell from the demo, these pairs currently
| aren't affected by texture healing, and they look a little
| awkward in Radon especially.
| nvartolomei wrote:
| Commit Mono font does something similar and calls it "Smart
| kerning". Visit https://commitmono.com/ and click on the "04
| Intelligent" tab for details.
|
| In practice this is unusable. Because the width of the letters
| now depends on the succeeding character, the text jumps as you
| write it. Super annoying.
|
| Cool for reading. Awful for writing.
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| I was initially thinking ... "OK, another monospace font
| (family), look nice", until I got to "texture healing" which
| really made me want to try it out.
|
| I really like the idea of using different style of font for
| different things, but as primarily terminal user, I don't even
| know which terminals support it (if any), and then we would need
| CLI text editors support as well. But I think it's a great idea.
| helix278 wrote:
| How would you configure a text editor or terminal to use
| different fonts based on syntax (e.g. neon for code, argon for
| comments)?
| leipert wrote:
| In vscode probably easy because it is all CSS?
|
| Other editors/terminal emulators would probably need to add
| support for this.
| idan wrote:
| Hi! I worked on this at Next.
|
| Unfortunately, it's on the editor to support mixing fonts.
| There's never been multiple compatible monospaced fonts before
| so no editors really support this yet. Lots of editors also
| don't support variable typefaces properly yet (ahem, VS Code)
| but this is going to change.
|
| Ultimately what you're describing is the future! But we have to
| release the typefaces to bootstrap that future.
|
| We made a prototype extension that hack it into VS Code. But
| they're hacky af and not really releasable.
| ctenb wrote:
| I wonder if terminal escape code sequences would arise to
| support this too!
| markcollin wrote:
| going to try this out.. clever font name ;)
| aquir wrote:
| I keep using Berkeley Mono! That font is just perfect! This font
| and the styles are a bit wonky for me...
| csande17 wrote:
| I'm curious what people think of the "Mix & Match" examples.
|
| Radon (the handwriting one) seems to complement the other fonts
| well because it's basically an italic. But all the others are so
| similar, with their identical metrics and whatnot, that the
| "authoritative docstrings" and "Copilot voice" examples are
| really hard to distinguish.
| itishappy wrote:
| I like everything about this! Font families seem like an
| incredible idea that I'm surprised nobody's done before, variable
| fonts are new to me and super interesting, textural healing seems
| like a huge step forward, and damn if that isn't one of the
| smoothest sites I've ever played with. Nice work!
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| > Font families seem like an incredible idea that I'm surprised
| nobody's done before
|
| Oh this has been done for _decades_. Metafont (by the
| inimitable Don Knuth) let you describe glyphs as toolpaths in
| code. You could have as many parameters as you wanted; I 've
| seen examples where a sans-serif is smoothly swept into a
| serif.
|
| Metafont never got adopted as much as I would have hoped; the
| lack of a graphical editor and some impedance mismatch with
| OpenType probably prevented its wider adoption.
| samus wrote:
| Texture healing is a really smart and beautiful idea! I will try
| to apply it to Chinese handwriting, which is often monospace. A
| lot of common, but really dense characters (especially
| traditional ones, for example these: Bian Tie Can Ting Tai Yao Ji
| Mian Gu Lu Lou Bang Rang ) could benefit from receiving
| additionally space to spread out.
| zaps wrote:
| When I get that feeling / I need textural healing
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Superfamily? they're just making up stuff so they can bundle a
| bunch of fonts and say people are using "theirs"
|
| blah
| Kerrick wrote:
| > Monospaced fonts are generally incompatible with one another.
| Each one uses different metrics, making it impossible to mix
| different fonts. Each Monaspace font is designed to be
| seamlessly mixed and matched. Layer more meaning onto code,
| with a palette that goes beyond colors and bolder weights.
| Build interfaces for code that require more structure and
| hierarchy.
|
| FTA. It means you can do things like have inline comments use
| Radon, docstrings use Xenon, code use Neon, and string literals
| use Krypton for more visual difference -- without the line
| heights and columns getting all weird because of it.
| redder23 wrote:
| I really hate most of these fontLigatures. They just confuse me,
| many of the character combination I never even used in the
| languages I code in. And others look so different that I would be
| afraid to not know what they actually are.
|
| Some seem useful but is seems I can not pick them individually
| and have to commit to an entire group of them. The symbol for </>
| (something I never used anyway) looks like the absolute worst to
| me, like how is that better? And especially of you do rarely or
| never used it you get forced into this shit if you like other
| things from that group and enable it.
|
| Turning two == into one long one, NO! I think people just
| overthink it, it becomes confusing and not more readable.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Beautiful.
|
| Even to my aesthetically un-nuanced sensitivity, these fonts look
| good
| bsder wrote:
| Can we _please_ stop with abusing ligatures for things like !=
| into [?]? If you want APL, please use APL and leave the rest of
| us alone.
|
| != is _two bloody characters_ not _one_.
|
| And now people are doing it for _3_ characters.
|
| With this kind of thing, you get _all_ the text editing idiocy of
| combining characters (like emojis) for no benefit at all.
|
| See: Text Editing Hates You Too https://lord.io/text-editing-
| hates-you-too/
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(page generated 2023-11-09 23:00 UTC)