Beyond monospace: the search for the perfect coding font
Designing coding fonts involves more than monospacing. Key considerations include hyphens resembling minus signs, aligning symbols, distinguishing zero from O, and ensuring clarity for developers and type designers. Testing with proofing strings is recommended.
Read original article
The article discusses the importance of designing a suitable font for coding beyond just being monospaced. It highlights specific characters like hyphens, asterisks, mathematical symbols, foot and inch marks, slashes, parentheses, and zero characters that need special attention in coding fonts. The design considerations include making characters like hyphens resemble minus signs, aligning asterisks and carets with mathematical symbols, ensuring mathematical symbols are adequately sized, and making symbols like foot and inch marks distinguishable. Additionally, the font should differentiate between zero and capital O, and characters like I, l, and 1 to avoid confusion. The article emphasizes the significance of these design elements for developers choosing fonts and type designers crafting fonts for coding purposes. It concludes by suggesting a comprehensive proofing string for testing coding fonts and encourages the creation of well-designed programming fonts.
Related
As you learn Forth, it learns from you (1981)
The Forth programming language is highlighted for its unique features like extensibility, speed, and efficiency. Contrasted with Basic, Forth's threaded code system and data handling methods make it versatile.
Tetris Font (2020)
The Tetris Font, designed by Erik and Martin Demaine, features letters made of Tetris pieces, challenging users with puzzle elements. Created in 2020, it showcases the complexity of Tetris in a unique typographic experience.
Font as Tetris [video]
The video discusses font evolution from clay tablets to digital fonts, covering styles, typography progress, ligatures, OTF and TTF formats. It mentions Metafont, hinting techniques, and Half Bus C++ library integration.
Advanced text features and PDF
The post explores complex text features in PDFs, covering Unicode, glyph representation, kerning, and font challenges. It emphasizes tools like Harfbuzz and CapyPDF for accurate text handling in PDFs.
Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
The article explores microfeatures for blogs and websites inspired by programming concepts. It highlights sidenotes, navigation tools, progress indicators, and interactive elements to improve user experience subtly. Examples demonstrate practical implementations.
0 commentsRelated
As you learn Forth, it learns from you (1981)
The Forth programming language is highlighted for its unique features like extensibility, speed, and efficiency. Contrasted with Basic, Forth's threaded code system and data handling methods make it versatile.
Tetris Font (2020)
The Tetris Font, designed by Erik and Martin Demaine, features letters made of Tetris pieces, challenging users with puzzle elements. Created in 2020, it showcases the complexity of Tetris in a unique typographic experience.
Font as Tetris [video]
The video discusses font evolution from clay tablets to digital fonts, covering styles, typography progress, ligatures, OTF and TTF formats. It mentions Metafont, hinting techniques, and Half Bus C++ library integration.
Advanced text features and PDF
The post explores complex text features in PDFs, covering Unicode, glyph representation, kerning, and font challenges. It emphasizes tools like Harfbuzz and CapyPDF for accurate text handling in PDFs.
Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites
The article explores microfeatures for blogs and websites inspired by programming concepts. It highlights sidenotes, navigation tools, progress indicators, and interactive elements to improve user experience subtly. Examples demonstrate practical implementations.