[HN Gopher] Server Mono: A Typeface Inspired by Typewriters, App...
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Server Mono: A Typeface Inspired by Typewriters, Apple's SF Mono,
and CLIs
Author : yankcrime
Score : 158 points
Date : 2024-08-11 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (servermono.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (servermono.com)
| malodyets wrote:
| Much good there but l and 1 are identical.
| mroche wrote:
| I'm really surprised this made it through, it's one of the
| handful of character sets that _require_ distinct glyphs to
| prevent confusion /mixups.
| vmladenov wrote:
| Not quite, the 1's top serif extends to the left edge.
| https://postimg.cc/nXMt2qhx Still way too close for comfort.
| queuebert wrote:
| To be fair, they did say it was inspired by typewriters, and
| most old typewriters don't have a '1', so you type a lowercase
| 'l' instead.
| irundebian wrote:
| That are really old typewriters.
| amelius wrote:
| Then don't call it "server". Call it "typewriter".
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Yeah it's annoying in several fonts, not just that one. So I
| simply modify the font I'm using: one thing I do is I remove
| the lower left horizontal bar from lowercase 'l', that way it
| cannot be mistaken from a '1'.
|
| Basically changing what's on the left to what's on the right:
| *** *** * * * *
| * * ***** ***
|
| It's a little trick I've been using since so long I don't even
| remember since when I'm doing that.
| m463 wrote:
| > I simply modify the font I'm using
|
| One of those minor nudges in life...
|
| EDIT: and also a monospaced comment on hn to describe it :)
| ezekg wrote:
| Love the zero, but agreed.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I use proportional fonts for coding that don't really
| distinguish between 1 and l, it doesn't seem to matter in
| practice.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Line spacing is way too tight.
| luluthefirst wrote:
| It makes their paragraphs hard to read regardless of the font.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| > and the Internet Development Studio Company community
|
| This reads very PR-ish and lame.
| oguz-ismail wrote:
| Lowercase f and r are ugly.
| hahamaster wrote:
| Especially "r", horrible.
| java-man wrote:
| As an alternative, I would suggest to consider Iosevka [0]. I am
| using it in the browser and for coding.
|
| [0] https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka
| lycos wrote:
| I can't put my finger on it but I don't find this enjoyable to
| read at all.. so I don't know much about readability claims here.
| Maybe I'm an outlier.
| copperroof wrote:
| I know nothing whatsoever about readability but this almost
| makes me ill to read. Very unsettling.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Type writer fonts are hard to read in general. Kerning leads to
| readability in general.
| ecjhdnc2025 wrote:
| The line spacing is way too tight (this is line-spacing: 1).
|
| Obviously that is beneficial for ASCII-art (smaller vertical
| gaps), but plain text would benefit from at least 1.1 and maybe
| 1.2.
|
| I am not a typographer but the cap height of this font (I think
| it's the cap height) appears quite large, when perhaps it would
| be better to have a slightly smaller cap height so the ASCII-
| art features would work well at line-height 1.0 without the
| letters feeling so vertically cramped.
|
| Basically, slightly less-tall letters.
|
| But as I say, not an expert.
| loeg wrote:
| I'd describe it as excessively bold/heavy.
| deathanatos wrote:
| So, if you're going to demonstrate the box drawing characters --
| and in a monospaced font, I would -- they should line up?
|
| E.g., under "lines", the rows are overlapping;
| https://i.imgur.com/KnOP2Wu.png ; I would think they're only
| supposed to just touch, with no gap, no overlap.
|
| The boxes, similarly, don't quite line up right.
| https://i.imgur.com/6pVYh9a.png (Even the 100% box isn't lining
| up right, although somehow what FF screenshotted != what it
| rendered. _sigh._ ) The point being, you want these to tile
| seamlessly. Oddly, they tile _differently_ in the pictures-of-
| font that break up the page. (Which I 'm not sure what they're
| supposed to be? One is called
| "5af1d7a5-fa60-4827-9b4f-808cdb635d59" and has no alt text. They
| remind me of Dwarf Fortress though.)
|
| As other people hint, this seems like the line height is cramped.
| I/l/1 ambiguities is a deal breaker for any terminal font,
| though.
| LoganDark wrote:
| They do line up, if you install and use the OTF version:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/N2tNaiO
|
| although some characters still seem to be missing, most of them
| work as intended.
|
| edit: nevermind, looks like it was using Lucida Sans instead!
| what is going on? does the OTF only include ASCII or something?
| worewood wrote:
| Number One, Pipe Character, lower case L, upper case I, zero
| and O, Parentheses and Brackets, are so common pain points on
| coding and terminal fonts. Those should be painfully distinct.
| riiii wrote:
| Moaning about my personal preference, it's not for me. I find the
| letter shapes inconsistent and line spacing is too narrow. My
| eyes hurt after reading a few lines.
|
| But hey, well done on getting it out the door!
| replete wrote:
| line-height: 28px !important
|
| It's not very readable with line-height set to the x-height,
| ironically. Cool font though.
|
| Find some old demoscene / warez ansi headers and show it put some
| on the homepage perhaps?
| vincent-manis wrote:
| I'm also not enthralled with this. Mind you, I really like
| Cascadia Code, which in its 2024 iteration includes NerdFonts
| characters. Finally, something done by Microsoft that I can
| recommend unreservedly!
| Uehreka wrote:
| Not sure what the images on this page are supposed to be, they
| don't load in iOS Safari. Also I'm not seeing the 1/I/l confusion
| other people are talking about, so it's possible the font isn't
| rendering in Safari either and it's falling back to the default
| monospace font.
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(page generated 2024-08-11 23:00 UTC)