17 ms·

Show HN: Berkeley Mono Typeface

355 points by neilpanchal 5y ago

olivertaylor 5y ago
Looks great, congrats.
minimaxir 5y ago
At a risk of sounding like a font snob, what's the difference between this and Roboto?
- lmilcin 5y ago
  At a risk of sounding unfriendly, the best way I know is to look at them side by side. They are different fonts. A lot of good looking mono fonts look very similar and there is a reason for that. As designers fine tune features for better legibility (main concern with terminal typeface) fonts converge to look roughly the same. But they still have different feel when you get a lot of text on a screen.
- drewzero1 5y ago
  A very distinctive feature of Berkeley Mono seems to be the squared-circle used in the rounded characters, where Roboto has very circular characters. I'm sure there a lot more differences if I saw them side-by-side, but that's the most obvious one for this font snob.
- hurricanesugar 5y ago
  A font snob wouldn’t ask this question :) But I’m glad you asked. Learn about how font characters are structured[0]. Then zoom in, inspect and compare the details of a few characters from both fonts. This will help you understand how they’re different. [0] https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-1/type-anatomy/anatomy https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-1/typ...
brightffw 5y ago
I very much welcome the new wave of mono fonts being developed recently. As a visually impaired person who has issues differentiating fonts on different backgrounds, the variety of fonts is very important as it allows me to find the optimal font for the environment and color contrast. Mono variety used to be limited but I can see a renaissance now!
alangibson 5y ago
I rarely get excited by fonts, but I'm loving this one. I only recently realized how long machine readable fonts have been around while working on a reproduction of the Apollo 11 flight plan. I love how this one has some of their flavor while still being easy on the eyes.
- zellyn 5y ago
  I feel the same. Very nice font!
BeenChilling 5y ago
motohagiography 5y ago
Having flashbacks to Sun 3/60 bootp sequence to get X served to them. Nice.
leetrout 5y ago
I would love to see ligatures incorporated but I understand that is a polarizing opinion. I love the little niceties of rendering arrows which are used all over the place these days.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I am personally not a fan of ligatures, but since they seem to be entirely optional and controlled by the IDE, I think it would be nice to see them included. For people not like me, because it won't hurt me, and will broaden the appeal.
  - Griffinsauce 5y ago
    I love this take, thanks for being pragmatic and open minded!
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  +1, this would be an instant purchase if it included ligature options. I like supporting font designers but for a mono font I need this.
- cflewis 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm one of those people who has spent so long with ligatures that not having them is a deal breaker for me. I use PragmataPro and have done for many years. It's pretty similar to this but has lots of nice ligatures.
- seabea 5y ago
  Yup, instant purchase, if/when ligatures are added.
_jordan 5y ago
side note: what an absolutely beautiful website. clear and fast. I love it.
- arendtio 5y ago
  Yes, but why make it left aligned? I like the limited width and left aligned text is also good, but IMHO the content as a whole should be in the center of the web page.
  - canaus 5y ago
    Why should the content be in the center of the webpage?
    - arendtio 5y ago
      Because the user is typically looking at the center of a screen. Sure, you can organize you windows in a way to compensate and center the content manually. But I think there are two usage patterns: 1. maximized browser windows 2. non maximized windows For the first pattern, the above statement is essential. Naturally, the user is looking at the center of the screen. The second pattern is somewhat unpredictable, because you neither know where the window is on the screen nor the size of it. But the typical behavior for centering content (`margin: 0 auto;`) does not make any difference compared to left aligned content when the window is smaller than the content. The only hard to judge situation is, when the window is not maximized, but larger than the content and I think for that case it is pretty hard to judge if left aligned or centered content is superior.
ainar-g 5y ago
I really like the font, but I doubt that a claim of “wide language support” can be made when Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and other scripts are not supported.
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  Greek is on the way (last pic on the blog post) and more to come soon: https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/ https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/ Current support: ISO 8859-1 Latin-1 Western European ISO 8859-2 Latin-2 Central European ISO 8859-3 Latin-3 South European ISO 8859-4 Latin-4 North European ISO 8859-9 Latin-5 Turkish ISO 8859-10 Latin-6 Nordic ISO 8859-13 Latin-7 Baltic Rim ISO 8859-15 Latin-9 Finnish, Estonian ISO 8859-16 Latin-10 South-Eastern European
  - ainar-g 5y ago
    Thanks, that's nice to hear!
joeberon 5y ago
armadillu 5y ago
I can only really judge a font when its loaded in my system, running in my setup. I wish font makers targeting developers would release trial fonts (with some essential chars missing or similar), so that we could test them properly before paying. I am always looking for a better font, and this one looks like it may be an improvement over my current one.
- josefrichter 5y ago
  MonoLisa has a playground where you can paste code snippets and try the font - that might be a good approach for other fonts aimed at developers. https://www.monolisa.dev/playground https://www.monolisa.dev/playground [I am not affiliated with MonoLisa]
  - lghh 5y ago
    MonoLisa also has a trial version. [1] They have a great site, I love the font, and the availability of a free trial was the icing on the cake. Great experience all around. https://www.monolisa.dev/buy/661578 https://www.monolisa.dev/buy/661578
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  Thanks and good feedback, beta testing was done in a similar way - font cut with a few missing glyphs and was limited to ASCII-basic set. I'll see if I can extend this more generally.
  - cschmidt 5y ago
    I'd second the vote for some "testing" fonts. At the very least, could you include some screenshots of larger chunks of code, with {} etc? I can't really tell how this will look on a screen full of code.
    - neilpanchal 5y ago
      Here is some Python, but no {}: https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/#berkeley-mono-specimens https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/#b... I'll plan for a nice page with various languages and full page screenshots. Edit: Fixed link, thanks.
spockz 5y ago
I really like the font. At least at mobile it seems to be extremely clear. I cannot pinpoint why. But to try it in my editor it seems I need to buy a $75 license first. Is there another free download button I missed?
- Bilal_io 5y ago
  Nope, you didn't miss anything. The license is $75 for the developer package, you use it unlimited times, anywhere you want (except commercial use) and you get unlimited updates. I was excited for it, but I cannot justify the price. I may however consider the $25/year for commercial use if I ever want to use it.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Creator said somewhere in the thread he's considering a trial version.
flobosg 5y ago
What a great marketing page. I loved the animation! I’m also a big fan of the design of the author’s website: https://neil.computer/ https://neil.computer/
- usrme 5y ago
  Wholly agreed in regards to the author's website, it's absolutely fantastic!
- cloud_herder 5y ago
  You know those pictures where it says "the longer you look the worse it gets" - this is the opposite of that. The longer I look at this site, the more I love it.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    It's not unlike scrolling through a social media feed, with the short segments, boxes, and animations.
woodruffw 5y ago
This looks very nice. I've used Latin Modern Mono[1] as my monospace font for a decade, but this is seriously making my consider a switch! [1]: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/latin-modern-mono https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/latin-modern-mono
MrYellowP 5y ago
That's a really nice set of uppercase letters.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
I like the typeface but I think it would be helpful to have a way for someone to copy and paste their code as a preview but I think that if you allowed that then others could download your font for free. You might want to mention that it costs $75 above the fold and I would think that you would want also to center the column of the site itself (these are nitpicks though).
- bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
  One option to allow users to preview the font while not letting them download it for free is to have them submit their code sample, render an image of it on the server, then send that back to the user. Not as nice as rendering the font in browser, of course, but it works.
  - zitterbewegung 5y ago
    I was thinking that but others also mentioned to have a trial mode font that didn’t have a complete character set also. Rendering a picture might become costly.
  - kiddico 5y ago
    I've seen projects posted here that render your code as a screenshot for posting online or something. (??) That always seemed silly to me. This is would be the perfect application of it.
  - kevincox 5y ago
    The problem with rendering a picture is that it doesn't reflect how it renders on my setup in my editor which can be quite important.
humanistbot 5y ago
> Berkeley Mono wears a UNIX T-shirt and aspires to be etched on control panels in black synthetic lacquer. It is Adrian Frutiger visits Bell Labs. It is Gene Kranz's command. It operates with calibrated precision and has a datasheet. It costs $75 for an individual license, not really in the spirit of UNIX
- Finnucane 5y ago
  Really? In Ye Olde Dayes, there was some pretty pricey Unix software.
  - kevbin 5y ago
    I remember the days of $800/cpu for a System V R2 license with no outline fonts :)
  - vondur 5y ago
    Heck, I remember OpenStep costing around $700 back in the 90’s.
- jameshe 5y ago
  Yeah, every time a typeface is shared on here it is met with some opposition since most cost money for individuals/personal use. I understand it's hard to take the time to design a nice typeface and that the creators should be compensated for their work, but sadly it means fonts like these are practically limited to commercial use. I wonder if there's a better way to turn a profit on typefaces - there's been a handful of really interesting ones posted on HN I've wanted to try.
  - Turing_Machine 5y ago
    There is a ton of entitlement nowadays, that's for sure. One should be grateful to those who do release their hard work to the public domain or under a FOSS license, rather than being resentful toward those who don't. People absolutely deserve to be compensated for their work, if they so choose, and they are absolutely permitted to release their work under any license they want.
grafelic 5y ago
Is it available as a bitmap font, i.e pcf or bdf? It is the only way I can get mono spaced fonts as crisp as I like them in linux desktop terminals.
rytill 5y ago
Does anyone know what font is used for the copy of this website?
- nonnontrivial 5y ago
  Looks like it is something called "Univers LT Pro".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- poyu 5y ago
  Inspecting the page in the Inspector shows that it's using the Univers[1] font [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers
z3t4 5y ago
I do not have any problems paying for something that I will use several hours every day. But would like to try the font in my editor before purchasing. Could have a demo download that only contains the most common letters like A-z0-9 and the brackets etc ([{:,.-_|&! Sure many will use the "demo" forever, but those people might be future customers and mouth-to-mouth marketers
rootusrootus 5y ago
It looks really nice! Probably not $75 of nice for me, but I can appreciate that the designer ought to get compensated for their effort.
Koshkin 5y ago
Looks nice, but Consolas is the best IMO.
whg_ 5y ago
The "This page has been intentionally left blank." in the datasheet... what a beautiful & hilarious touch.
serverlessmom 5y ago
I refuse to support any typeface that lacks my háček
cormullion 5y ago
>comforting and yet stern, disciplined yet easy, regimented yet flexible I admire the marketing copy very much!
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  I had a lot of fun with marketing. My style is always tongue-in-cheek, try to have fun, and has to be a little quirky!
seanhunter 5y ago
This looks great. It reminds me very much of the old vt100 font except that obviously without visible pixelation and gaps. Nice job.
- seanhunter 5y ago
  Oh my word just installed these- They look absolutely dope. If anything it looks better in my actual terminal than on the website. very happy to pay for such great design. Also the checkout flow on the website was super-slick. Nice job all round.
abeyer 5y ago
The licensing is unclear/vague/contradictory... I'm totally confused what the 'developer' license actually means when it says you can use it for "personal use in professional context, but not commercial." And how is a subscription for a print product handled? Do I have to burn my printed materials if I don't renew a subscription? Font vendors seem to _love_ coming up with weird snowflake licensing schemes rather than trying to stick with something well understood.
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  I actually wanted to make it simpler. Separating professional use (this is how Input Mono font does it) and commercial use allows developers to use fonts for their daily work, but the machine belongs to their employer and the work they do is for their employer; while also being able to provide a separate Commercial license for companies and businesses. There are no page view limits for websites (no trackers), installation limits , epub/ebook limits, etc. Basically it is along the lines of FontSpring's worry free license and I think its even better.
  - abeyer 5y ago
    Thanks, that's what I thought it was _trying_ to say, but I'm not sure that's what it actually _does_ say. You might look at the jetbrains individual license for some language that I think is more clear and objective: A personal license must be paid for by a single named individual, not paid or reimbursed by a company, and is not re-assignable, while the organizational license is more a "floating seat" that can be paid by a company and assigned to individual employees as needed. That helps sidestep the mess of trying to define what is "professional but not commercial." Also, under a subscription model I'd want some assurance that previously created print materials receive a perpetual license even if I didn't renew and that I wouldn't have to try to excise it from everywhere I've used it in the past if the license ever lapsed.
  - duped 5y ago
    This left me more confused - there are two cases : - the typeface is used in media, or otherwise distributed - the typeface is used locally in some app Which license supports which case?
M0r13n 5y ago
Love it.
muhammadusman 5y ago
I am impressed by how quickly the page loaded, looked at the source code and what do you know? No modern UI library being used, semantic class names and not a lot of code being loaded. I'm impressed by the simplicity!
leetrout 5y ago
The author is in this thread... a corp license is $30 / year and a personal license is $75 forever. Maybe we could do a one time HN group buy @ $30 forever just this one time? Say a minimum of 25 people agree?
- jihchi 5y ago
  I'd love to join the group buy if it is possible
  - leetrout 5y ago
    The author didn't respond on here... assuming he saw this I guess he wasn't interested.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
wodenokoto 5y ago
That marketing animation looked absolutely amazing!
andybp85 5y ago
i actually really like the font, but I'm super turned off by the copy. i feel like this kind of writing belongs on a wine bottle or in a calvin klein catalog. to each their own, i suppose.
airstrike 5y ago
I wish the page had more examples at, say, the 10pt size which is more comparable to what I am using in my editor. The huge copy in the examples look beautiful but they hardly map to real world usage so not entirely helpful...
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  +1000. It would also be useful to see it rendered at small sizes on different OS's -- macOS and Windows and some X environments -- because the font renderers on different platforms produce different visual results and the differences are often more visible at smaller sizes.
sp332 5y ago
Overall I really like this, but a five-pointed asterisk? Everyone knows an asterisk should have six points! Edit: in the datasheet PDF, on page 14, I'm seeing both styles of 7 render the same. ss05 and ss06
- cormullion 5y ago
  5 or 6 is usual, there are 7s too https://github.com/cormullion/know-your-fonts/blob/master/asterisky-business.pdf https://github.com/cormullion/know-your-fonts/blob/master/as...
Aloha 5y ago
I'd pay something to use this on my personal machine, but I don't make printed materials, I just like a nice terminal font. Nor do I much care to use web fonts either, so while its very pretty, I dont know that its 75 dollars worth of pretty.
ChikkaChiChi 5y ago
Very derivative of OCR B by Frutiger. A shame it doesn't come out and say that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-B Looks great, otherwise!
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  The comparison with OCR-B is on the website, here is a detailed view: https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/unique-comparison.svg https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/unique-...
jasonpeacock 5y ago
I can’t tell from the page - is this powerline compatible? Many of us all have fancy prompts and other text envs that need powerline glyph support.
teknopaul 5y ago
If you look at the Burgevouns comparison Berkley mono is the least good. It's compared to non-mono fonts which, naturally, have better kerning. Having three different representations of the number 0 including one that is indistinguishable from upper case o makes this a no-no for coding from my point of view. It's one of the first things I look for and why I love Hack. https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sp332 5y ago
  You get to pick which kind of 0 to use. If you don't like the plain one then use a different one. It's better to have options.
jbverschoor 5y ago
Looks nice. I might even change
woah 5y ago
Nowhere on the page does it show the font being used in a code editor with code colorization
fho 5y ago
Funny to see Haskell as the only (general purpose) language in the demo :-)
jmrm 5y ago
Does it has ligatures? If it doesn't, it should be a pretty good thing to add to some people.
37ef_ced3 5y ago
I use the Go font: https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts Free and beautiful.
- hda111 5y ago
  These are good fonts but it’s unclear why it’s not released under a proper font license like SIL Open Font License. This would make the use of the fonts much easier.
mtgentry 5y ago
As a designer I love how much typography is appreciated on HN.
bborud 5y ago
I like the font. I'd pay $75 for a license if it works for editing code. The problem is that it typically takes a week or so of use to determine if it would work for me. I'm not going to pay $75 for something that I won't know if I have any use for.
liquidise 5y ago
The Zero and capital "O" look quite similar to my eye: https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/code-symbols.svg https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/code-sy... I doubt that this amount of work overlooked such a common programming font comparison. Any idea why they made them nearly identical?
- tasha0663 5y ago
  You customize it before you download it. There are four different zeroes and only one looks like the O. See the other examples.
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  There are 4 versions of zero glyph, I need to fix the comparison image though. It should be showing zero with a dot. Edit: Fixed. Thank you! https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/code-symbols.svg https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/code-sy...
tasha0663 5y ago
All those zero glyphs... is it getting hot in here?? Never seen that one with the negative-space slash. Is there a name for that?
- alecbz 5y ago
  I'm confused; what controls which of the zero glyphs you see?
  - neilpanchal 5y ago
    We offer downloads of pre-configured stylistic sets (variations). All you need to do is download the specific version and install it. In applications such as Adobe Illustrator, you can select the variant using Open Type features: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/special-characters.html https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/special-characters...
banku_brougham 5y ago
I think this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Of course the creators should get paid, its a lifetime license, I'm going to forgo some of my usual BS purchases and get it.
lidavidm 5y ago
This may be a dumb question, but how do you make a document like that fake patient chart in this demo? [1] Is there an editor that can do things like this? Or is it all laid out by hand? [1] https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/ https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/
- goldenchrome 5y ago
  It’s likely laid out by hand. Given the file name “Artboard-2” my guess is that it’s done in Adobe Illustrator, but you can do that in any graphics editing tool like Photoshop, Figma, Sketch, etc. For typographic work, I recommend a vector-based tool because it scales to any resolution.
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  Yes, done by hand, a lot of elbow grease. Same with the animation which took an insane amount of time (700 frames). Shout out to MonoDraw (Berkeley Mono works wonderfully with it): https://monodraw.helftone.com/ https://monodraw.helftone.com/
  - lidavidm 5y ago
    Ah, thank you for the response! I'm quite impressed, seeing that example nearly made me impulse buy the font.
- bduerst 5y ago
  Not saying this is what they used for this demo, but Crystal Reports is commonly used in the medical industry for print/reporting like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Reports#/media/File:SAP_Crystal_Reports_2016_screenshot_(College_Board_PSAT_9.0).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Reports#/media/File:SA... (if that is what you were asking)
raphlinus 5y ago
This one is tasty! It reminds me of Olivetti Cubic a bit, but definitely has its own distinctive style.
huhtenberg 5y ago
Looks nice in principle, but being suitable for the actual daily use (for coding) will depend on how it renders in a specific IDE at a specific size on a specific OS. There's LOTS of mono fonts that look great in larger sizes or on Macs, but that all but unbearable to look at in smaller sizes on Windows. There's no mention of this font having a manually hinted TTF version, which is pretty much required for rendering under these conditions. This gives me a very big pause. As others have said - at $75 a pop this font absolutely needs a downloadable, installable and usable trial. How it looks in PDF and rendered to a bitmap may showcase its design well, but not its real-world usage. That's assuming that the author means to position it also as a coding font (which seems to be the case judging by the samples).
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  TTF hinting is automatic, using vertical and horizontal stem widths. Manual hinting is WIP. I've gotten feedback for trial fonts, please sign up for notifications at the bottom of the page and we'll email you when that's properly available. It requires some font engineering and writing up a license for it.
  - raegis 5y ago
    Do you have any screenshots with emacs or vim on Linux, and maybe a terminal?
    - neilpanchal 5y ago
      iTerm (on macOS): https://berkeleygraphics-public.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/comparison/berkeley-mono-terminal-screenshot.png https://berkeleygraphics-public.s3.amazonaws.com/static/imag... I don't have a linux desktop handy, I'll create a full suite of screenshots in various environments and languages to post on the website.
      - chefandy 5y ago
        Thanks for working on this. I’ve always been into type and hand-lettering, did a bit of letterpress work, am almost done with a graphic design BFA where I really dug into type and typesetting. I also spent the last 12 years as a developer (and also interface design most recently,) and the better part of the prior decade in nix systems administration and software support… monospaced fonts are a bizarrely perfect convergence of interests! I also applaud your willingness to solicit open critique from folks outside the field. The domain the font is hosted on indicates you do design work professionally, so I’ll offer a customarily frank ‘pinned up on the wall in the studio’ design critique. Apologies if it seems overly frank. I only offer it because I think it’s worth critiquing. Based on this screenshot, the readability suffers because the typographic color (edit for non-type-nerds… basically the density of ink in any block of text if printed in black)* is too dark. Single lines aren’t bad even if words could stand to be tracked out a touch, but the density makes entire blocks pretty tough to parse quickly, which is a showstopper for scanning logs. Outside of a terminal, you could mitigate it with leading and tracking to some extent. Even then, the combination of slightly heavy stroke weight, tall x-height, and comparatively tight packing make it feel pretty cramped. Formally, the glyphs generally sit nicely as well-balanced individual artifacts, but the relationships don’t materialize to form visually fluid words. For example, if you look at “BERKELEY” in your title SVG, the slope on top of the B and R either needs to start later or needs to be more severe. With the strong horizontal created by the cap line in all the other letters, the very slight curve starting that early makes it seem uneven rather than softened. There isn’t enough horizontal momentum or obvious departure from it to look deliberate, and everything else is too uniform for that subtlety to look appropriate. Menlo, as probably the closest mono analog, resolves that tension by starting the curve later and making giving it a more deliberate attack. I don’t think this has too far to go before being adapted, but those types of issues are what I’d expect to see in an open source type family rather than a $75 bundle. Having a flat price and throwing in a bunch of extra seats compared to the big foundries doesn’t really make sense. To business customers, $75 once vs some user based licensing billed out periodically doesn’t make much of a difference. Individual folks hesitate to pay $39 for Matthew Carter’s gorgeous Big Caslon because they don’t want to pay $39, not because they don’t get enough seats.
atoav 5y ago
I like the font. But I think it really misses a light variant.
jonsen 5y ago
This is the first time I see a new monospaced typeface and it does not immediately invoke some skepticism.
29athrowaway 5y ago
Very similar to JetBrains Mono.
ricardobeat 5y ago
Love this, but I find the yearly / per-seat pricing for commercial use very hostile. Nobody wants to be chasing bills for a single typeface in their project. A one-off charge somewhere between $300-$999 would be much more attractive, buy-and-forget.
biztos 5y ago
Looks nice. You could support Hungarian with only two additional letters. I find the subscription license for commercial use a bit problematic. Say I have an app and I want to use the font. That’s “commercial” as long as it’s not “personal” AFAICT… and if I stop paying your fee some day then technically the app has to be modified or taken down. This might not be a problem, but it’s not really “no strings attached.” There should be a fixed-fee perpetual commercial license as well. Best of luck with it, I’m sure it’s hard to compete with all the free developer fonts!
Iwan-Zotow 5y ago
l is wrong, no go for me
xiphias2 5y ago
I see all Hungarian letters supported in the central-European character set, I think you can add it to the list of supported languages.
Gollapalli 5y ago
It's really rather beautiful. I'd love to able t run it in my terminal or my emacs. IDK, maybe when I can splurge.
wolverine876 5y ago
Why the alternative version of "7"? The alternative zeroes are useful because zero looks like capital O, but with what would I confuse a "7"? Or is it there for another reason?
- onetom 5y ago
  7 is similar to the italic 1, I guess. but also, the hand written version of 7 was taught to us, in Hungary, in the 1980s, with a small horizontal cross-line on the slanted stem of the 7. we quickly abandoned that small detail when writing, because we never saw that on printed material, though in writing 1 & 7 can be similar
shirro 5y ago
Very effective presentation. It looks fantastic. Will be good value at $75 for some people but not for me with so many other great mono fonts available (many with code ligatures). Probably better for designers than coders. With small fonts for everyday I don't see any big difference in readibilty beyond something like Fira Code unles you are very particular. Beyond that it is mostly taste (or lack of) but then I currently use Comic Code Ligature so I am clearly crazy.
crispyalmond 5y ago
I like it, but there's one thing about fonts that always gets me is that it looks better in the pictures than it does in my editors.
AtNightWeCode 5y ago
I am against serifs but for monospace fonts I find it to be a necessity. For me the examples are very hard to read.
- fallat 5y ago
  pt mono is my go to. you?
HNHatesUsers 5y ago
ismaildonmez 5y ago
I know I'm the niche of the niche, but many fonts I tried, have problems rendering Turkish characters e.g "ş" "ı" "ğ" "ü", does the font support these, if yes, could we get a screenshot with iTerm2 if possible? :)
- oceliker 5y ago
  Merhaba :) they are visible in this image [1], so I assume they are supported, but I sadly don't have the font myself to try it out. [1] https://neil.computer/content/images/size/w1600/2022/02/berkeley-mono-south-eastern-european.png https://neil.computer/content/images/size/w1600/2022/02/berk...
  - ismaildonmez 5y ago
    Teşekkürler!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chaz6 5y ago
I enquired and I was told in no uncertain terms that the license forbids patching. This means that you cannot use the popular Nerd Fonts [1] patch set for adding missing glyphs. I hope that will change as I would like to use this typeface. [1] https://www.nerdfonts.com/ https://www.nerdfonts.com/
- notdefio 5y ago
  That's quite disappointing. As a Neovim user, I depend on nerd fonts for icons. Does the license forbid patching even for personal use? Or is it only forbidden to re-distribute the patched font, by using it on a website for example?
- aidenn0 5y ago
  I'm not familiar with Nerd Fonts; is there a reason that font-fallback can't be used for missing glyphs?
mangopi 5y ago
As a dev who constantly switches out fonts / themes & also pays for them, a few things to note: - I mainly test for clarity, how HD something is on my IDE from 12 to 16px. I paid for Monolisa (which I like a lot) but other open source fonts actually have higher fidelity(Luculent, Fairfax HD, Hermit, Agave) - this gives me pause on purchase of license. - No ligatures isn’t a deal breaker, but many open source fonts have them Day 1 & are implementing them well. My work place has lambdas & operators all over code base - some fonts make it easier to parse around. - Price is not bad overall, as I feel paid fonts are Quality of Life coder tools, like mechanical keyboards (pro surfers don’t use surfboards from Walmart). - Summary is that I’m on the verge to take the plunge but really need a day or 2 in the trenches with it to see how I flow with it. Trial version should exist like others say. Similarities to JetBrains Mono are there even if unintentionally so. - I support indie mono fonts, keep iterating!
neilpanchal 5y ago
Berkeley Mono Trial version is now available: https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono

355 points by neilpanchal 5y ago

olivertaylor 5y ago

Looks great, congrats.

minimaxir 5y ago

At a risk of sounding like a font snob, what's the difference between this and Roboto?

lmilcin 5y ago
At a risk of sounding unfriendly, the best way I know is to look at them side by side. They are different fonts. A lot of good looking mono fonts look very similar and there is a reason for that. As designers fine tune features for better legibility (main concern with terminal typeface) fonts converge to look roughly the same. But they still have different feel when you get a lot of text on a screen.
drewzero1 5y ago
A very distinctive feature of Berkeley Mono seems to be the squared-circle used in the rounded characters, where Roboto has very circular characters. I'm sure there a lot more differences if I saw them side-by-side, but that's the most obvious one for this font snob.
hurricanesugar 5y ago
A font snob wouldn’t ask this question :) But I’m glad you asked. Learn about how font characters are structured[0]. Then zoom in, inspect and compare the details of a few characters from both fonts. This will help you understand how they’re different. [0] https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-1/type-anatomy/anatomy https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-1/typ...

brightffw 5y ago

I very much welcome the new wave of mono fonts being developed recently. As a visually impaired person who has issues differentiating fonts on different backgrounds, the variety of fonts is very important as it allows me to find the optimal font for the environment and color contrast. Mono variety used to be limited but I can see a renaissance now!

alangibson 5y ago

I rarely get excited by fonts, but I'm loving this one. I only recently realized how long machine readable fonts have been around while working on a reproduction of the Apollo 11 flight plan. I love how this one has some of their flavor while still being easy on the eyes.

zellyn 5y ago
I feel the same. Very nice font!

BeenChilling 5y ago

motohagiography 5y ago

Having flashbacks to Sun 3/60 bootp sequence to get X served to them. Nice.

leetrout 5y ago

I would love to see ligatures incorporated but I understand that is a polarizing opinion. I love the little niceties of rendering arrows which are used all over the place these days.

rootusrootus 5y ago
I am personally not a fan of ligatures, but since they seem to be entirely optional and controlled by the IDE, I think it would be nice to see them included. For people not like me, because it won't hurt me, and will broaden the appeal.
- Griffinsauce 5y ago
  I love this take, thanks for being pragmatic and open minded!
kitsunesoba 5y ago
+1, this would be an instant purchase if it included ligature options. I like supporting font designers but for a mono font I need this.
cflewis 5y ago
Yeah, I'm one of those people who has spent so long with ligatures that not having them is a deal breaker for me. I use PragmataPro and have done for many years. It's pretty similar to this but has lots of nice ligatures.
seabea 5y ago
Yup, instant purchase, if/when ligatures are added.

_jordan 5y ago

side note: what an absolutely beautiful website. clear and fast. I love it.

arendtio 5y ago
Yes, but why make it left aligned? I like the limited width and left aligned text is also good, but IMHO the content as a whole should be in the center of the web page.
- canaus 5y ago
  Why should the content be in the center of the webpage?
  - arendtio 5y ago
    Because the user is typically looking at the center of a screen. Sure, you can organize you windows in a way to compensate and center the content manually. But I think there are two usage patterns: 1. maximized browser windows 2. non maximized windows For the first pattern, the above statement is essential. Naturally, the user is looking at the center of the screen. The second pattern is somewhat unpredictable, because you neither know where the window is on the screen nor the size of it. But the typical behavior for centering content (`margin: 0 auto;`) does not make any difference compared to left aligned content when the window is smaller than the content. The only hard to judge situation is, when the window is not maximized, but larger than the content and I think for that case it is pretty hard to judge if left aligned or centered content is superior.

ainar-g 5y ago

I really like the font, but I doubt that a claim of “wide language support” can be made when Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and other scripts are not supported.

neilpanchal 5y ago
Greek is on the way (last pic on the blog post) and more to come soon: https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/ https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/ Current support: ISO 8859-1 Latin-1 Western European ISO 8859-2 Latin-2 Central European ISO 8859-3 Latin-3 South European ISO 8859-4 Latin-4 North European ISO 8859-9 Latin-5 Turkish ISO 8859-10 Latin-6 Nordic ISO 8859-13 Latin-7 Baltic Rim ISO 8859-15 Latin-9 Finnish, Estonian ISO 8859-16 Latin-10 South-Eastern European
- ainar-g 5y ago
  Thanks, that's nice to hear!

joeberon 5y ago

armadillu 5y ago

I can only really judge a font when its loaded in my system, running in my setup. I wish font makers targeting developers would release trial fonts (with some essential chars missing or similar), so that we could test them properly before paying. I am always looking for a better font, and this one looks like it may be an improvement over my current one.

josefrichter 5y ago
MonoLisa has a playground where you can paste code snippets and try the font - that might be a good approach for other fonts aimed at developers. https://www.monolisa.dev/playground https://www.monolisa.dev/playground [I am not affiliated with MonoLisa]
- lghh 5y ago
  MonoLisa also has a trial version. [1] They have a great site, I love the font, and the availability of a free trial was the icing on the cake. Great experience all around. https://www.monolisa.dev/buy/661578 https://www.monolisa.dev/buy/661578
neilpanchal 5y ago
Thanks and good feedback, beta testing was done in a similar way - font cut with a few missing glyphs and was limited to ASCII-basic set. I'll see if I can extend this more generally.
- cschmidt 5y ago
  I'd second the vote for some "testing" fonts. At the very least, could you include some screenshots of larger chunks of code, with {} etc? I can't really tell how this will look on a screen full of code.
  - neilpanchal 5y ago
    Here is some Python, but no {}: https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/#berkeley-mono-specimens https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/#b... I'll plan for a nice page with various languages and full page screenshots. Edit: Fixed link, thanks.

spockz 5y ago

I really like the font. At least at mobile it seems to be extremely clear. I cannot pinpoint why. But to try it in my editor it seems I need to buy a $75 license first. Is there another free download button I missed?

Bilal_io 5y ago
Nope, you didn't miss anything. The license is $75 for the developer package, you use it unlimited times, anywhere you want (except commercial use) and you get unlimited updates. I was excited for it, but I cannot justify the price. I may however consider the $25/year for commercial use if I ever want to use it.
908B64B197 5y ago
Creator said somewhere in the thread he's considering a trial version.

flobosg 5y ago

What a great marketing page. I loved the animation! I’m also a big fan of the design of the author’s website: https://neil.computer/ https://neil.computer/

usrme 5y ago
Wholly agreed in regards to the author's website, it's absolutely fantastic!
cloud_herder 5y ago
You know those pictures where it says "the longer you look the worse it gets" - this is the opposite of that. The longer I look at this site, the more I love it.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  It's not unlike scrolling through a social media feed, with the short segments, boxes, and animations.

woodruffw 5y ago

This looks very nice. I've used Latin Modern Mono[1] as my monospace font for a decade, but this is seriously making my consider a switch! [1]: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/latin-modern-mono https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/latin-modern-mono

MrYellowP 5y ago

That's a really nice set of uppercase letters.

zitterbewegung 5y ago

I like the typeface but I think it would be helpful to have a way for someone to copy and paste their code as a preview but I think that if you allowed that then others could download your font for free. You might want to mention that it costs $75 above the fold and I would think that you would want also to center the column of the site itself (these are nitpicks though).

bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
One option to allow users to preview the font while not letting them download it for free is to have them submit their code sample, render an image of it on the server, then send that back to the user. Not as nice as rendering the font in browser, of course, but it works.
- zitterbewegung 5y ago
  I was thinking that but others also mentioned to have a trial mode font that didn’t have a complete character set also. Rendering a picture might become costly.
- kiddico 5y ago
  I've seen projects posted here that render your code as a screenshot for posting online or something. (??) That always seemed silly to me. This is would be the perfect application of it.
- kevincox 5y ago
  The problem with rendering a picture is that it doesn't reflect how it renders on my setup in my editor which can be quite important.

humanistbot 5y ago

> Berkeley Mono wears a UNIX T-shirt and aspires to be etched on control panels in black synthetic lacquer. It is Adrian Frutiger visits Bell Labs. It is Gene Kranz's command. It operates with calibrated precision and has a datasheet. It costs $75 for an individual license, not really in the spirit of UNIX

Finnucane 5y ago
Really? In Ye Olde Dayes, there was some pretty pricey Unix software.
- kevbin 5y ago
  I remember the days of $800/cpu for a System V R2 license with no outline fonts :)
- vondur 5y ago
  Heck, I remember OpenStep costing around $700 back in the 90’s.
jameshe 5y ago
Yeah, every time a typeface is shared on here it is met with some opposition since most cost money for individuals/personal use. I understand it's hard to take the time to design a nice typeface and that the creators should be compensated for their work, but sadly it means fonts like these are practically limited to commercial use. I wonder if there's a better way to turn a profit on typefaces - there's been a handful of really interesting ones posted on HN I've wanted to try.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  There is a ton of entitlement nowadays, that's for sure. One should be grateful to those who do release their hard work to the public domain or under a FOSS license, rather than being resentful toward those who don't. People absolutely deserve to be compensated for their work, if they so choose, and they are absolutely permitted to release their work under any license they want.

grafelic 5y ago

Is it available as a bitmap font, i.e pcf or bdf? It is the only way I can get mono spaced fonts as crisp as I like them in linux desktop terminals.

rytill 5y ago

Does anyone know what font is used for the copy of this website?

nonnontrivial 5y ago
Looks like it is something called "Univers LT Pro".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
poyu 5y ago
Inspecting the page in the Inspector shows that it's using the Univers[1] font [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers

z3t4 5y ago

I do not have any problems paying for something that I will use several hours every day. But would like to try the font in my editor before purchasing. Could have a demo download that only contains the most common letters like A-z0-9 and the brackets etc ([{:,.-_|&! Sure many will use the "demo" forever, but those people might be future customers and mouth-to-mouth marketers

rootusrootus 5y ago

It looks really nice! Probably not $75 of nice for me, but I can appreciate that the designer ought to get compensated for their effort.

Koshkin 5y ago

Looks nice, but Consolas is the best IMO.

whg_ 5y ago

The "This page has been intentionally left blank." in the datasheet... what a beautiful & hilarious touch.

serverlessmom 5y ago

I refuse to support any typeface that lacks my háček

cormullion 5y ago

>comforting and yet stern, disciplined yet easy, regimented yet flexible I admire the marketing copy very much!

neilpanchal 5y ago
I had a lot of fun with marketing. My style is always tongue-in-cheek, try to have fun, and has to be a little quirky!

seanhunter 5y ago

This looks great. It reminds me very much of the old vt100 font except that obviously without visible pixelation and gaps. Nice job.

seanhunter 5y ago
Oh my word just installed these- They look absolutely dope. If anything it looks better in my actual terminal than on the website. very happy to pay for such great design. Also the checkout flow on the website was super-slick. Nice job all round.

abeyer 5y ago

The licensing is unclear/vague/contradictory... I'm totally confused what the 'developer' license actually means when it says you can use it for "personal use in professional context, but not commercial." And how is a subscription for a print product handled? Do I have to burn my printed materials if I don't renew a subscription? Font vendors seem to _love_ coming up with weird snowflake licensing schemes rather than trying to stick with something well understood.

neilpanchal 5y ago
I actually wanted to make it simpler. Separating professional use (this is how Input Mono font does it) and commercial use allows developers to use fonts for their daily work, but the machine belongs to their employer and the work they do is for their employer; while also being able to provide a separate Commercial license for companies and businesses. There are no page view limits for websites (no trackers), installation limits , epub/ebook limits, etc. Basically it is along the lines of FontSpring's worry free license and I think its even better.
- abeyer 5y ago
  Thanks, that's what I thought it was _trying_ to say, but I'm not sure that's what it actually _does_ say. You might look at the jetbrains individual license for some language that I think is more clear and objective: A personal license must be paid for by a single named individual, not paid or reimbursed by a company, and is not re-assignable, while the organizational license is more a "floating seat" that can be paid by a company and assigned to individual employees as needed. That helps sidestep the mess of trying to define what is "professional but not commercial." Also, under a subscription model I'd want some assurance that previously created print materials receive a perpetual license even if I didn't renew and that I wouldn't have to try to excise it from everywhere I've used it in the past if the license ever lapsed.
- duped 5y ago
  This left me more confused - there are two cases : - the typeface is used in media, or otherwise distributed - the typeface is used locally in some app Which license supports which case?

M0r13n 5y ago

Love it.

muhammadusman 5y ago

I am impressed by how quickly the page loaded, looked at the source code and what do you know? No modern UI library being used, semantic class names and not a lot of code being loaded. I'm impressed by the simplicity!

leetrout 5y ago

The author is in this thread... a corp license is $30 / year and a personal license is $75 forever. Maybe we could do a one time HN group buy @ $30 forever just this one time? Say a minimum of 25 people agree?

jihchi 5y ago
I'd love to join the group buy if it is possible
- leetrout 5y ago
  The author didn't respond on here... assuming he saw this I guess he wasn't interested.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

wodenokoto 5y ago

That marketing animation looked absolutely amazing!

andybp85 5y ago

i actually really like the font, but I'm super turned off by the copy. i feel like this kind of writing belongs on a wine bottle or in a calvin klein catalog. to each their own, i suppose.

airstrike 5y ago

I wish the page had more examples at, say, the 10pt size which is more comparable to what I am using in my editor. The huge copy in the examples look beautiful but they hardly map to real world usage so not entirely helpful...

KerrAvon 5y ago
+1000. It would also be useful to see it rendered at small sizes on different OS's -- macOS and Windows and some X environments -- because the font renderers on different platforms produce different visual results and the differences are often more visible at smaller sizes.

sp332 5y ago

Overall I really like this, but a five-pointed asterisk? Everyone knows an asterisk should have six points! Edit: in the datasheet PDF, on page 14, I'm seeing both styles of 7 render the same. ss05 and ss06

cormullion 5y ago
5 or 6 is usual, there are 7s too https://github.com/cormullion/know-your-fonts/blob/master/asterisky-business.pdf https://github.com/cormullion/know-your-fonts/blob/master/as...

Aloha 5y ago

I'd pay something to use this on my personal machine, but I don't make printed materials, I just like a nice terminal font. Nor do I much care to use web fonts either, so while its very pretty, I dont know that its 75 dollars worth of pretty.

ChikkaChiChi 5y ago

Very derivative of OCR B by Frutiger. A shame it doesn't come out and say that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-B Looks great, otherwise!

neilpanchal 5y ago
The comparison with OCR-B is on the website, here is a detailed view: https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/unique-comparison.svg https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/unique-...

jasonpeacock 5y ago

I can’t tell from the page - is this powerline compatible? Many of us all have fancy prompts and other text envs that need powerline glyph support.

teknopaul 5y ago

If you look at the Burgevouns comparison Berkley mono is the least good. It's compared to non-mono fonts which, naturally, have better kerning. Having three different representations of the number 0 including one that is indistinguishable from upper case o makes this a no-no for coding from my point of view. It's one of the first things I look for and why I love Hack. https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sp332 5y ago
You get to pick which kind of 0 to use. If you don't like the plain one then use a different one. It's better to have options.

jbverschoor 5y ago

Looks nice. I might even change

woah 5y ago

Nowhere on the page does it show the font being used in a code editor with code colorization

fho 5y ago

Funny to see Haskell as the only (general purpose) language in the demo :-)

jmrm 5y ago

Does it has ligatures? If it doesn't, it should be a pretty good thing to add to some people.

37ef_ced3 5y ago

I use the Go font: https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts Free and beautiful.

hda111 5y ago
These are good fonts but it’s unclear why it’s not released under a proper font license like SIL Open Font License. This would make the use of the fonts much easier.

mtgentry 5y ago

As a designer I love how much typography is appreciated on HN.

bborud 5y ago

I like the font. I'd pay $75 for a license if it works for editing code. The problem is that it typically takes a week or so of use to determine if it would work for me. I'm not going to pay $75 for something that I won't know if I have any use for.

liquidise 5y ago

The Zero and capital "O" look quite similar to my eye: https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/code-symbols.svg https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/code-sy... I doubt that this amount of work overlooked such a common programming font comparison. Any idea why they made them nearly identical?

tasha0663 5y ago
You customize it before you download it. There are four different zeroes and only one looks like the O. See the other examples.
neilpanchal 5y ago
There are 4 versions of zero glyph, I need to fix the comparison image though. It should be showing zero with a dot. Edit: Fixed. Thank you! https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/code-symbols.svg https://berkeleygraphics.com/static/images/marketing/code-sy...

tasha0663 5y ago

All those zero glyphs... is it getting hot in here?? Never seen that one with the negative-space slash. Is there a name for that?

alecbz 5y ago
I'm confused; what controls which of the zero glyphs you see?
- neilpanchal 5y ago
  We offer downloads of pre-configured stylistic sets (variations). All you need to do is download the specific version and install it. In applications such as Adobe Illustrator, you can select the variant using Open Type features: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/special-characters.html https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/special-characters...

banku_brougham 5y ago

I think this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Of course the creators should get paid, its a lifetime license, I'm going to forgo some of my usual BS purchases and get it.

lidavidm 5y ago

This may be a dumb question, but how do you make a document like that fake patient chart in this demo? [1] Is there an editor that can do things like this? Or is it all laid out by hand? [1] https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/ https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/

goldenchrome 5y ago
It’s likely laid out by hand. Given the file name “Artboard-2” my guess is that it’s done in Adobe Illustrator, but you can do that in any graphics editing tool like Photoshop, Figma, Sketch, etc. For typographic work, I recommend a vector-based tool because it scales to any resolution.
neilpanchal 5y ago
Yes, done by hand, a lot of elbow grease. Same with the animation which took an insane amount of time (700 frames). Shout out to MonoDraw (Berkeley Mono works wonderfully with it): https://monodraw.helftone.com/ https://monodraw.helftone.com/
- lidavidm 5y ago
  Ah, thank you for the response! I'm quite impressed, seeing that example nearly made me impulse buy the font.
bduerst 5y ago
Not saying this is what they used for this demo, but Crystal Reports is commonly used in the medical industry for print/reporting like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Reports#/media/File:SAP_Crystal_Reports_2016_screenshot_(College_Board_PSAT_9.0).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Reports#/media/File:SA... (if that is what you were asking)

raphlinus 5y ago

This one is tasty! It reminds me of Olivetti Cubic a bit, but definitely has its own distinctive style.

huhtenberg 5y ago

Looks nice in principle, but being suitable for the actual daily use (for coding) will depend on how it renders in a specific IDE at a specific size on a specific OS. There's LOTS of mono fonts that look great in larger sizes or on Macs, but that all but unbearable to look at in smaller sizes on Windows. There's no mention of this font having a manually hinted TTF version, which is pretty much required for rendering under these conditions. This gives me a very big pause. As others have said - at $75 a pop this font absolutely needs a downloadable, installable and usable trial. How it looks in PDF and rendered to a bitmap may showcase its design well, but not its real-world usage. That's assuming that the author means to position it also as a coding font (which seems to be the case judging by the samples).

neilpanchal 5y ago
TTF hinting is automatic, using vertical and horizontal stem widths. Manual hinting is WIP. I've gotten feedback for trial fonts, please sign up for notifications at the bottom of the page and we'll email you when that's properly available. It requires some font engineering and writing up a license for it.
- raegis 5y ago
  Do you have any screenshots with emacs or vim on Linux, and maybe a terminal?
  - neilpanchal 5y ago
    iTerm (on macOS): https://berkeleygraphics-public.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/comparison/berkeley-mono-terminal-screenshot.png https://berkeleygraphics-public.s3.amazonaws.com/static/imag... I don't have a linux desktop handy, I'll create a full suite of screenshots in various environments and languages to post on the website.
    - chefandy 5y ago
      Thanks for working on this. I’ve always been into type and hand-lettering, did a bit of letterpress work, am almost done with a graphic design BFA where I really dug into type and typesetting. I also spent the last 12 years as a developer (and also interface design most recently,) and the better part of the prior decade in nix systems administration and software support… monospaced fonts are a bizarrely perfect convergence of interests! I also applaud your willingness to solicit open critique from folks outside the field. The domain the font is hosted on indicates you do design work professionally, so I’ll offer a customarily frank ‘pinned up on the wall in the studio’ design critique. Apologies if it seems overly frank. I only offer it because I think it’s worth critiquing. Based on this screenshot, the readability suffers because the typographic color (edit for non-type-nerds… basically the density of ink in any block of text if printed in black)* is too dark. Single lines aren’t bad even if words could stand to be tracked out a touch, but the density makes entire blocks pretty tough to parse quickly, which is a showstopper for scanning logs. Outside of a terminal, you could mitigate it with leading and tracking to some extent. Even then, the combination of slightly heavy stroke weight, tall x-height, and comparatively tight packing make it feel pretty cramped. Formally, the glyphs generally sit nicely as well-balanced individual artifacts, but the relationships don’t materialize to form visually fluid words. For example, if you look at “BERKELEY” in your title SVG, the slope on top of the B and R either needs to start later or needs to be more severe. With the strong horizontal created by the cap line in all the other letters, the very slight curve starting that early makes it seem uneven rather than softened. There isn’t enough horizontal momentum or obvious departure from it to look deliberate, and everything else is too uniform for that subtlety to look appropriate. Menlo, as probably the closest mono analog, resolves that tension by starting the curve later and making giving it a more deliberate attack. I don’t think this has too far to go before being adapted, but those types of issues are what I’d expect to see in an open source type family rather than a $75 bundle. Having a flat price and throwing in a bunch of extra seats compared to the big foundries doesn’t really make sense. To business customers, $75 once vs some user based licensing billed out periodically doesn’t make much of a difference. Individual folks hesitate to pay $39 for Matthew Carter’s gorgeous Big Caslon because they don’t want to pay $39, not because they don’t get enough seats.

atoav 5y ago

I like the font. But I think it really misses a light variant.

jonsen 5y ago

This is the first time I see a new monospaced typeface and it does not immediately invoke some skepticism.

29athrowaway 5y ago

Very similar to JetBrains Mono.

ricardobeat 5y ago

Love this, but I find the yearly / per-seat pricing for commercial use very hostile. Nobody wants to be chasing bills for a single typeface in their project. A one-off charge somewhere between $300-$999 would be much more attractive, buy-and-forget.

biztos 5y ago

Looks nice. You could support Hungarian with only two additional letters. I find the subscription license for commercial use a bit problematic. Say I have an app and I want to use the font. That’s “commercial” as long as it’s not “personal” AFAICT… and if I stop paying your fee some day then technically the app has to be modified or taken down. This might not be a problem, but it’s not really “no strings attached.” There should be a fixed-fee perpetual commercial license as well. Best of luck with it, I’m sure it’s hard to compete with all the free developer fonts!

Iwan-Zotow 5y ago

l is wrong, no go for me

xiphias2 5y ago

I see all Hungarian letters supported in the central-European character set, I think you can add it to the list of supported languages.

Gollapalli 5y ago

It's really rather beautiful. I'd love to able t run it in my terminal or my emacs. IDK, maybe when I can splurge.

wolverine876 5y ago

Why the alternative version of "7"? The alternative zeroes are useful because zero looks like capital O, but with what would I confuse a "7"? Or is it there for another reason?

onetom 5y ago
7 is similar to the italic 1, I guess. but also, the hand written version of 7 was taught to us, in Hungary, in the 1980s, with a small horizontal cross-line on the slanted stem of the 7. we quickly abandoned that small detail when writing, because we never saw that on printed material, though in writing 1 & 7 can be similar

shirro 5y ago

Very effective presentation. It looks fantastic. Will be good value at $75 for some people but not for me with so many other great mono fonts available (many with code ligatures). Probably better for designers than coders. With small fonts for everyday I don't see any big difference in readibilty beyond something like Fira Code unles you are very particular. Beyond that it is mostly taste (or lack of) but then I currently use Comic Code Ligature so I am clearly crazy.

crispyalmond 5y ago

I like it, but there's one thing about fonts that always gets me is that it looks better in the pictures than it does in my editors.

AtNightWeCode 5y ago

I am against serifs but for monospace fonts I find it to be a necessity. For me the examples are very hard to read.

fallat 5y ago
pt mono is my go to. you?

HNHatesUsers 5y ago

ismaildonmez 5y ago

I know I'm the niche of the niche, but many fonts I tried, have problems rendering Turkish characters e.g "ş" "ı" "ğ" "ü", does the font support these, if yes, could we get a screenshot with iTerm2 if possible? :)

oceliker 5y ago
Merhaba :) they are visible in this image [1], so I assume they are supported, but I sadly don't have the font myself to try it out. [1] https://neil.computer/content/images/size/w1600/2022/02/berkeley-mono-south-eastern-european.png https://neil.computer/content/images/size/w1600/2022/02/berk...
- ismaildonmez 5y ago
  Teşekkürler!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chaz6 5y ago

I enquired and I was told in no uncertain terms that the license forbids patching. This means that you cannot use the popular Nerd Fonts [1] patch set for adding missing glyphs. I hope that will change as I would like to use this typeface. [1] https://www.nerdfonts.com/ https://www.nerdfonts.com/

notdefio 5y ago
That's quite disappointing. As a Neovim user, I depend on nerd fonts for icons. Does the license forbid patching even for personal use? Or is it only forbidden to re-distribute the patched font, by using it on a website for example?
aidenn0 5y ago
I'm not familiar with Nerd Fonts; is there a reason that font-fallback can't be used for missing glyphs?

mangopi 5y ago

As a dev who constantly switches out fonts / themes & also pays for them, a few things to note: - I mainly test for clarity, how HD something is on my IDE from 12 to 16px. I paid for Monolisa (which I like a lot) but other open source fonts actually have higher fidelity(Luculent, Fairfax HD, Hermit, Agave) - this gives me pause on purchase of license. - No ligatures isn’t a deal breaker, but many open source fonts have them Day 1 & are implementing them well. My work place has lambdas & operators all over code base - some fonts make it easier to parse around. - Price is not bad overall, as I feel paid fonts are Quality of Life coder tools, like mechanical keyboards (pro surfers don’t use surfboards from Walmart). - Summary is that I’m on the verge to take the plunge but really need a day or 2 in the trenches with it to see how I flow with it. Trial version should exist like others say. Similarities to JetBrains Mono are there even if unintentionally so. - I support indie mono fonts, keep iterating!

neilpanchal 5y ago

Berkeley Mono Trial version is now available: https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono