Server Mono: A Typeface Inspired by Typewriters, Apple's SF Mono, and CLIs

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.

For those commenting on the importance of character ambiguity, I completely agree, and offer "DP Sans Mono", a font specifically designed for unambiguous proofreading.

https://www.pgdp.net/wiki/DP_Sans_Mono

https://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/font_sample.php

font download link at https://www.pgdp.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=70714

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.

Much good there but l and 1 are identical.

Well, instead of complaining here about 1 and l, I just filed a ticket on their GH repo and it already got resolved... https://github.com/internet-development/www-server-mono/issu...

Nitpick: the acknowledgements make a cute usage of "thy" and "thou hast". However, they actually refer to multiple individuals, and need to use "your" and "you have". Boring, and wrecks the aesthetic, I know...

I’ll just mention Berkeley Graphics and the excellent Berkeley Mono.

https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/

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

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!

> and the Internet Development Studio Company community

This reads very PR-ish and lame.

Font seems to not include the '<', '>', or '=' characters. I sympathize with font designers, there are so many glyphs you have to stare at - hundred if not thousands - for days and weeks on end; eventually you get tired of seeing them...

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.

Just a comment from behind the former Iron Curtain, I am really happy that you included letters with diacritics.

When it comes to ÁĚÝŘŠ etc., the Iron Curtain still sometimes rears its head from the screen, even in 2024.

Perfect line spacing, other fonts have it way too wide between lines, screen feels half-empty. Great font, switching to it . Medium weight would be lovely, though

Why do we need another font like this? It looks ugly anyway, plus has the other problems people mentioned about character distinguishability.

A single weight font doesn't really meet the needs of modern CLI environments does it?

And I don't get what the ASCII art have to do with anything. What does it depict? Screenshots from some scifi movie?

And finally oh god, l and 1 are literally the same.

Tangential, but I quite like this quote: “Just as the scientist must think and experiment alternately, so the artist, the author and the scholar must alternate creation or study with participation in the life around them.”

How far back from the monitor should I be to be able to interpret what the ASCII art blocks are showing? Seems like maybe they were inspired by those 90's "Magic Eye" pictures.

I am not sure if I like the font or not, but I do like the corpus of text used to demonstrate the character rendering. At first glance, I thought it was Quenya or Sindarin, but I am not too sure.

Great SF improvements, waiting for Nerd Fonts version :)

It might be better to create a website with a light theme, especially for a typeface inspired by typewriters.

I just can't read it.

after trying a myriad of "programming" fonts, nothing feels more comfortable than Pragmasevka [0], a mix of PragmataPro and Iosevka.

[0] https://github.com/shytikov/pragmasevka

Personally, for a monospaced font, I prefer Jetbrains Mono. It's free and looks nice to me

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?

After reading through the thread, I want to show my warm and honest appreciation for Server Mono.

I like the art! I like the feel and… idk, visual rhythm? One man’s inconsistent is another man’s lively. I like the tight linespacing; Am of the opinion that line art glyphs should touch each other across lines – of course! – but it can’t be solved at the font level. We need console-oriented text rendering that knows how to connect those glyps. Could be done automatically but seems awkward. Could be done even better with, say, some kind of anchor points embedded into the font file – in a particular UNICODE location maybe?

And I for one don’t really mind I and l and 1 looking similar. Distinct is better but I am fond of the historic imperfection. O and 0 absolutely need to be distinguishable though! haha

That image at the top looks like petsci art.

Interesting choices for 1 and l...

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!

Line spacing is way too tight.

Lowercase f and r are ugly.