4 ms·

This is some schoolyard level stuff right here. The GP isn't using a monospaced font. Who, in the history of terminal emulators, has wanted to use a non-monospa

This is some schoolyard level stuff right here. The GP isn't using a monospaced font. Who, in the history of terminal emulators, has wanted to use a non-monospaced font in their terminal?

onion2k 5y ago
This is exactly the sort of "we can just skip that feature to make it faster!" edge case that I was talking about in my post.
- vermilingua 5y ago
  But it isn't an edge case! It's not an edge case, if it isn't a use case! This is an edge case as much as building a rasterizer directly into the terminal is an "edge case".
  - l30n4da5 5y ago
    > But it isn't an edge case! It's not an edge case, if it isn't a use case! The fact that a random commenter on HN used a non-monospaced font with refterm actually makes it a use case. I do, however, agree that it is an edge case with a very low probability.
    - fouric 5y ago
      Because it's such an improbable edge case, it seems like it's not relevant to the more general discussion of "does refterm's speed and features actually show that the rendering problem is far easier than the Microsoft developers made it out to be". The Microsoft terminal doesn't render monospaced fonts, the overwhelmingly common case, nearly as fast as refterm. If rendering variable-width fonts is somehow intrinsically insanely expensive for some reason (which I haven't seen anyone provide good evidence for), then a good implementation would still just take refterm's fast monospaced rendering implementation and use it for monospaced fonts, and a slower implementation for variable-width fonts. That is - refterm's non-existent variable-width font rendering capabilities do not excuse the Windows terminal's abysmal fixed-width font rendering capabilities.
      - l30n4da5 5y ago
        Agreed. It doesn't seem like it is relevant. My comment was more addressing that it _is_ an edge-case, albeit a very unlikely one.
- maficious 5y ago
  Would you actually...?
- 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
  Wait, what? Your edge case is something that no one would ever (should ever?) do? Are you going to complain about it not rendering scripts fonts correctly either? Also, it's worth noting that this isn't a compelling argument in the first place because the windows terminal doesn't even come close to rendering readable Arabic, it fucks up emoji rendering, etc – all cases that Casey was able to basically solve after two weekends of working on this.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    In my 25 years of software development I've found that I'm rarely able to enumerate what an application should or shouldn't do on my own. Unless the app is extremely simple and has very few options it's incredibly unusual for any individual to understand everything about it. While I don't have a use case where I'd want to use a variable space font in a terminal, that doesn't mean such a case doesn't exist for anyone. Maybe some people want that feature. Windows Terminal, for some reason, gives users the option to change their font to one that isn't monospaced, so I'd argue that it should render them correctly if the user chooses to do that.
avereveard 5y ago
https://i.imgur.com/WeV8Ror.png https://i.imgur.com/WeV8Ror.png so what now?

This is some schoolyard level stuff right here. The GP isn't using a monospaced font. Who, in the history of terminal emulators, has wanted to use a non-monospaced font in their terminal?

onion2k 5y ago

This is exactly the sort of "we can just skip that feature to make it faster!" edge case that I was talking about in my post.

vermilingua 5y ago
But it isn't an edge case! It's not an edge case, if it isn't a use case! This is an edge case as much as building a rasterizer directly into the terminal is an "edge case".
- l30n4da5 5y ago
  > But it isn't an edge case! It's not an edge case, if it isn't a use case! The fact that a random commenter on HN used a non-monospaced font with refterm actually makes it a use case. I do, however, agree that it is an edge case with a very low probability.
  - fouric 5y ago
    Because it's such an improbable edge case, it seems like it's not relevant to the more general discussion of "does refterm's speed and features actually show that the rendering problem is far easier than the Microsoft developers made it out to be". The Microsoft terminal doesn't render monospaced fonts, the overwhelmingly common case, nearly as fast as refterm. If rendering variable-width fonts is somehow intrinsically insanely expensive for some reason (which I haven't seen anyone provide good evidence for), then a good implementation would still just take refterm's fast monospaced rendering implementation and use it for monospaced fonts, and a slower implementation for variable-width fonts. That is - refterm's non-existent variable-width font rendering capabilities do not excuse the Windows terminal's abysmal fixed-width font rendering capabilities.
    - l30n4da5 5y ago
      Agreed. It doesn't seem like it is relevant. My comment was more addressing that it _is_ an edge-case, albeit a very unlikely one.
maficious 5y ago
Would you actually...?
9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
Wait, what? Your edge case is something that no one would ever (should ever?) do? Are you going to complain about it not rendering scripts fonts correctly either? Also, it's worth noting that this isn't a compelling argument in the first place because the windows terminal doesn't even come close to rendering readable Arabic, it fucks up emoji rendering, etc – all cases that Casey was able to basically solve after two weekends of working on this.
- onion2k 5y ago
  In my 25 years of software development I've found that I'm rarely able to enumerate what an application should or shouldn't do on my own. Unless the app is extremely simple and has very few options it's incredibly unusual for any individual to understand everything about it. While I don't have a use case where I'd want to use a variable space font in a terminal, that doesn't mean such a case doesn't exist for anyone. Maybe some people want that feature. Windows Terminal, for some reason, gives users the option to change their font to one that isn't monospaced, so I'd argue that it should render them correctly if the user chooses to do that.

avereveard 5y ago

https://i.imgur.com/WeV8Ror.png https://i.imgur.com/WeV8Ror.png so what now?