The way they talk about it makes it sound like they invented the written word, but that notwithstanding the fonts actually look really nice in my opinion.

  • penquin@lemmy.kde.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    65
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    People actually change fonts in their IDE? I’ve always used whatever the default is and never even thought about it.

    • interolivary@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I looked at the first couple of fonts, then read all that stuff about readability this, state of the art that, expressive palettes la-di-da and I thought “ok maybe they have an idea here”.

      Then I looked at the rest of the examples and ran into that… thing. Like, the fucker’s so aggressively irritating to read that you could use that font to hide eg. backdoors in code, and reviewers would instinctively skip over those parts just to avoid the pain.

    • scarilog@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      I can’t believe how no one seems to have mentioned how beautifully made this website is though. Absolute pleasure to scroll through on mobile.

    • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Great idea but the name texture healing is terrible. It’s not healing anything and there are no textures with fonts. Dynamic or flexible weight makes a lot more sense.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I agree that texture healing is a bit too vague about that they’re really using it for. Its really for kerning pair without disrupting the monospaced grid. Maybe, since the audience for these fonts aren’t usually typographers, they should have called it Monospaced Kerning Pairs?

        Texture is a term and feature of typefaces in design however. Usually described for fonts used in body text, or larger blocks of text.

        While it probably doesn’t affect shorter lines of text used in most coding languages, it can be harder to read when smaller sizes are used. Monospaced MmWw are the worst culprits.

        One memorable observation on typographic texture was made by Heinz Peyer, a Swiss poet, who said that reading a text composed in Helvetica was like walking through a field of stones, whereas reading a text in Syntax was like walking through a field of flowers. (23)

        Form is often susceptible to logical analysis, and pattern somewhat so, but texture evades precise description because its repetitions are so numerous, its features so small, and its interactions so refined, that the multifarious complexity of the emergent image resists orderly analysis. Texture requires a holistic more than an analytic under­ standing.

        Source

        Ironically the second paragraph is turning out to be largely incorrect with smarter ways to analyze blocks of typeface texture. Also this second paragraph nicely illustrates the utter wankery present in a lot of typography circles and analysis.

        Gotta justify that grad school bill somehow (pun intended).

        Edited for spelling

    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Like kerning pairs, but with character swapping instead of kerning adjustments. It’s a really clever use of the language features available in Unicode.

  • theshatterstone54@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    1 year ago

    I like Hack as my font of choice, but I will probably give this a shot. It’s a font, there is no risk of data collection, Microsoft style bugs, or other Microsoft-associated product issues.

      • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Some people care more about having fancy tools than actually doing work with them.

        On reddit, I used to subscribe to the VS Code subreddit. A lot of posts were just about themes, people asking “what theme is this” or posting their latest minor recolor. Meanwhile, I’m there for posts about actually using the damn thing.

        • indigomirage@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          You are correct, but I find dialing an easy-on-the-eyes colour and a good font reduces eye strain. It lets me keep the font size small with less fatigue especially as my eyes (and I) age.

          As for what theme? Usually it’s as simple as browsing through the presets until one jumps out. Takes a few seconds. Having more presets adds about 2 seconds to the process and often (not always!) results in an even better choice. Have no idea the name of the theme I end up with.

          Besides, tweaking this can be fun if you’re between thoughts - you end up learning the inner workings of the environment.

  • simple@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Looks lovely! The art of fonts is something I will never understand but always appreciate. This website is also brilliant in showing everything dynamically and explaining why it all matters. Safe to say Github will start using it everywhere? It’s also open source, which is nice (and makes sense considering what Github is striving for).

    Edit: Not 100% sure on texture healing though. Toggling it on and off in the example makes me feel like texture healing makes everything look weirder. It makes the font look less monospace which should be good, but it just messes with my mind when some letters look slightly different in different contexts. Like the spacing is not immediately obvious to me and having the same letters look different is throwing my mind in a loop. I guess I’ll need to try it to see if it’s comfortable.

  • Treczoks@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    1 year ago

    Very interesting technique to get the widths of the glyphs uniform without them looking ugly in most cases. OK, one can make it look bad if you know the “pain points” of the system, but in normal flowing texts, the fonts do look good.

  • singularity@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    1 year ago

    Having different font styles depending on the context is a really nice feature. I’ll definitely give it a try.

    • duncesplayed@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s a cool idea and the example they gave actually seemed pretty neat.

      I’d (somewhat perversely) love to see this feature tried in a terminal emulator. ANSI does actually define escape codes for switching to alternative fonts (ESC [ 10 m through ESC [ 19 m) though I don’t know of any software or even term drawing library that uses it.

      • crank@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Kitty terminal has a lot of configurations for fonts. I beleive you can get down to adjustments for specific charecters. Idk if it uses the specific technology you are suggesting. But it is explained in the kitty.conf docs.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      A lot of code editors support that without the weird “healing” features they laid out here.

      VSCode has pretty decent semantic based formatting options.

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    I didn’t think I had strong opinions on fonts.

    Turns out I viscerally despise “handwriting” fonts. They’re harder to read. It just makes me recoil.

    I also intensely dislike "ligatures " that turn like == into a separate glyph. Or the one that turns >= into the > with the line under it. No. Stop. That’s not what I typed. That’s not what I’m looking for when I scan the text.

    Side note: I assume someone is feeling clever and is thinking of replying with a handwriting font message with ligatures. You don’t have to. I already imagined it.

    The texture healing seems cool though, but I didn’t immediately notice or understand until I read through the detailed section on it.

  • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m a simple man, I just use DejaVu Sans Mono without any ligatures or other fancy stuff.

    Works everywhere.

  • ThetaDev@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Will they replace Consolas in Windows with this one or is it a GitHub-only-thing? In Consolas the characters 1 and l look very similar, making the font unsuitable for coding and terminal use, so it would be good if they replaced it with something else.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Anyone who makes a font where I l and | are not immediately distinguishable should be barred from working in the industry.

    • servermonky@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Unfortunately this new font family still struggles with the l1 issue,in all but the last two typefaces. There’s a lot of good ideas here, and the Krypton version isn’t too bad, but I still struggle to see why they haven’t figured out that gaping issue on most of the styles here.