8 ms·

The most expensive coding font for free?

143 points by multispace 15y ago

There is now a fundraising project going on for PragmataPro to make it available for free under a Creative Commons license

rdtsc 15y ago
The font looks good. But does it really solve a problem most people need solved? I don't remember last time I though "Hmm, if only I had a better font, I would work so much faster/better...". I did think that when using Linux 10 years ago when my fonts were blurry and fuzzy but not now. Another way to put it, even if that font was available for free now I don't know I'd bother installing it just because ... there is the step of installing it. I would just rather pick a font from my default OS font choices.
- mrleinad 15y ago
  Remember that most of the time, people don't know what they want until they see it.
  - praptak 15y ago
    Yeah, I have tested this hypothesis on myself. I have tried lots of fonts touted as the best for programming and found exactly zero difference. Time wasted, chalked up to experience. I think that anyone considering a donation should at least try the freely available fonts to see whether they make any difference.
    - peteforde 15y ago
      Why are you so determined to damn this effort? Can you imagine launching a weekend web startup project and having someone on here to look elsewhere before considering a donation? People starting businesses come here to be encouraged, and this guy isn't doing anything wrong. In fact, I wish more creatives would consider these sorts of alternative approaches to patronage.
      - maratd 15y ago
        > Why are you so determined to damn this effort? It's important to give people honest and clear feedback. By blindly encouraging them, you are doing them a disservice. Perhaps he can fine-tune his effort. Perhaps his talents are best applied elsewhere. You simply don't know. If his skin isn't thick enough to accept honest criticism, he shouldn't be starting or doing anything on his own. Honest feedback is important.
      - rdtsc 15y ago
        Sorry, perhaps it was my fault by starting on the criticism. It was just meant to be an honest observation. I think the font looks great and I appreciate the effort and time it took to create this font. However I see it more as an art piece. Just like an artist might have painstakingly created a body of work for 5 years, just the effort put into it, makes it impressive. To someone (a collector, a gallery) the piece might be worth $200,000, to me though, it might be or worth $0, just because I don't like it or I am shopping for utilitarian things at the moment. "Would this piece help me code faster?" kind of reasoning. So maybe it is just the wrong market. There might also be a luxury market out there for fonts, someone who has the latest and greatest set-up and has deep pockets who just needs something extra ? A book publisher? An OS vendor?
- prototypef 15y ago
  I agree. Most modern OS monospace fonts (Consolas, Monaco, Ubuntu Mono) are more than enough for any kind of programming. I don't really see the benefit of going out and trying new fonts. IMHO font size and color highlighting (color schemes?) play a much bigger role in making my work on a text editor be faster/better. Of course, it's a matter of personal taste, I did see one guy using Arial as a font on his text editor once...
- kellishaver 15y ago
  I agree. I'm one of those people who is very picky about their fonts, and I can't recall ever paying over $10 for a font for my own, personal, non-design related needs. In my case, it's due to the fact that I have poor eyesight, so having the right font can really make a big difference, but there are probably thousands of free/low-cost options out there. It was hard to find a monospace font that looked great at larger sizes (14pt), but in the end I settled on Luxi Mono (http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Luxi-Mono http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Luxi-Mono). It actually doesn't look that great in their previews, but renders much more smoothly in my editor. This makes me think that the operating system/rendering engine probably plays a bigger role.
stdbrouw 15y ago
There are just so many wonderful monospace fonts already out there that either come with your OS (Monaco, Consolas, Ubuntu Mono) or are free that I don't know why I should bother. People still pay for fonts instead of downloading cheap knockoffs because of ligatures, a wide amount of characters and meticulous kerning. All things that a monospaced font doesn't need. The one thing this font seems to add is that it is supposed to look good without font smoothing. But then, why would anyone care about that in a world where we always render fonts with anti-aliasing anyway?
- fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
  True. There are a lot good monospaced font but it's impossible for me working at screen with these cool fonts for this I designed PragmataPro. Tastes are tastes. All the glyphs of PragmataPro are designed under suggestions of programmers. In the set there are many glyphs ignored by other monospaced font designers, because I designed this font with programmers for programmers. PragmataPro are designed to work with and without antilaliasing. And it works
  - moe 15y ago
    And it works Apparently not on the Mac. The font looks quite terrible in your own Mac screenshot, there is visible blur at least in the letters w,m and T.
    - jcitme 15y ago
      Well, he did say it's only 50% done. If it mostly works on Windows, porting it to mac shouldn't be hard...
  - tripzilch 15y ago
    Could you give some explicit examples where you think PragmataPro is better than, say, Consolas? (except for the APL glyphs, I'm not sure if Consolas has those) Also, what possessed you to make a monospaced programming font condensed? Squeezing the proportions that way either allows you more characters on a line (bad programming practice) or less lines on a screen (also not good). PS in your screenshot, the special ligature things such as the smiley and the (P), are partly cut off.
DanBC 15y ago
43% in Italian taxes? That kind of sucks. He needs an accountant to give advice about (legally) reducing the tax burden to something more reasonable.
- libria 15y ago
  In the US, I think a 220k income would be taxed at ~40% state + federal. And yes, that does suck.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    In the UK someone would start a company, and be an employee of that company with a wage, and make themselves the only shareholder, and then an accountant would say "pay yourself some dividends now". At least that's what people used to do, but I guess it's been stopped now.
    - petercooper 15y ago
      Nope, it's still standard practice. You're still going to be paying at least 20% corporation tax on the profits though and then probably 22.5% on the dividend itself.
    - kls 15y ago
      We have a similar entity here in the States, it is called and S-Corp. It is designed for single owner businesses and does allow the owner to dodge some tax burden. Specifically the double taxation on income that a single owner would receive if there where under the rules of a C-Corp as well as some unemployment and FICA.
    - calpaterson 15y ago
      I'm pretty sure this practice has not been stopped.
      - DanBC 15y ago
        I think I'm getting confused IR35, which made contracting less attractive.
struppi 15y ago
If the 800 days are work days this means 4 years of work. ~200000 dollars really is not much for this time frame - you could even call it a bargain :) Anyway, I think I won't donate since I feel like I might lose the money when the goal is not reached (I don't really want a discount on the license fee).
- wccrawford 15y ago
  Yeah, I don't gamble. I'm willing to commit to kickstarter because I'll get my money back if the thing falls through. But whenever they say my money will go towards a discount (or a charity) if the deal fails, I never go for it. I'm not sure I've ever seen one succeed in that situation, actually.
  - davidu 15y ago
    What? You get your money back with Kickstarter? I've never heard of that... I'm pretty sure I've lost a few hundred bucks on failed kick-starters... I mean, they meet the goal, but the person never delivers.
    - ceejayoz 15y ago
      You get your money back if they don't meet their fundraising goal.
    - wccrawford 15y ago
      Well yeah, if the person doesn't deliver, you've helped fund them, but get nothing back. That's why kickstarter projects aren't supposed to supply actual value for the pledge. A lot of the latest one offer the product as a bonus, but don't tell you that you won't get the product if they fail.
      - davidu 15y ago
        Oh, I see. I guess I've only backed products or software or things where there was a deliverable... even a book once!
hipsterelitist 15y ago
4 years and over 200k dollars seems like quite a bit. I understand being meticulous, but this is a bit absurd.
- shin_lao 15y ago
  That's less than $ 25,000 / year, or around $ 120 / day. I don't think you can find a decent designer for $ 120 / day.
  - gk1 15y ago
    Nor would he _want_ to hire anyone to design a monospaced font for four years.
    - moe 15y ago
      Nor is it very likely that he worked four years, every single day, on this font.
      - peteforde 15y ago
        If you're genuinely interested, I'd suggest you check out the movie Helvetica. Fonts often take thousands of man-hours to complete, and faces with extended characters are much more involved. What this designer might lack in business chops he makes up in generousity. How many competent designers are willing to do something for $25k a year?
- antidaily 15y ago
  4 years as a side project would be my guess.
- trin_ 15y ago
  he actually elaborated on that and said that after fees and taxes it would be $96000 and that it would last him for about 800 days to design every charackter.
- ajross 15y ago
chrisjsmithuk 15y ago
That's not going to happen.
jeremygallant 15y ago
$20 RAISED OF $220,000 GOAL Yeah, I think I'm going to pass on this one.
- aggarwalachal 15y ago
  come on.. everyone starts at $0
tyw 15y ago
I downloaded the screenshots of this font and have to admit I wish I could use it right now. Looks pretty good to me. That said, the monetary goal seems a bit lofty considering how many people this would really solve a need for. Still, if the fundraising were arranged on something like kickstarter where I'd get my donation back if it fails to reach the goal I'd kick in a bit. Not terribly interested in a discount on the other license.
bjornsteffanson 15y ago
While depth and ambition of this project is impressive (take a look at the screenshots in the .zip), I think the goal seems a bit lofty, particularly when there are many more-than-adequate free/open-source monospace fonts available.
runn1ng 15y ago
I prefer the coding font Anonymous Pro (has nothing to do with the hacktivist group) - it's located here and it's for free. http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html Personally, PragmataPro looks too condensed for me. It is probably more "economical" to use condensed fonts, but to me, it is really not very readable.
aggarwalachal 15y ago
This is actually very expensive... If I made a font like this, I would rather keep it as a donation, as the font was developed out of free will. BTW I use Menlo...
natesm 15y ago
Why is it so narrow? It reminds me of doing things like "} else {" in code, packing lots of content onto the screen and removing all readability.
- tripzilch 15y ago
  Because in the 90s textmode screens looked like that. Except back in those days it was done to be able to fit 80 characters on a line instead of just 40. Today it enables programmers to fit WAY more characters on a line. It's like, the perfect oneliner font.
- sophacles 15y ago
  wait... what wrong with "} else {" ? It provides a simple and easy grouping of blocks.
  - natesm 15y ago
    This is obviously personal preference and opinion and all of that, but that's the whole point of discussion, so: if (something) { something(); } else { something_else(); } vs. if (something) { something(); } else { something_else(); } To me, the first one is chaotic. It's not so bad like that, but throw in a loop (as well as the external function declaration) and it's a complete mess. The second one is orderly. Block separation is very clear, and each brace is matched by an equal. IMO, if you need to worry about how many lines of code fit on your screen, it's probably time to refactor (or upgrade from a netbook). I might be crazy though, because I write int* foo instead of int *foo And no one does that. Pointers are a type!
    - beagle3 15y ago
      You might have a point, but your arguments are inconsistent with each other; You say > IMO, if you need to worry about how many lines of code fit on your screen, it's probably time to refactor (or upgrade from a netbook). But also: > Block separation is very clear, and each brace is matched by an equal. Block separation is equally clear in the first example (same column means same block), and if your IDE can't show you matches if you're lost, it's time to upgrade from ed or edlin. Also, > I might be crazy though, because I write "int* foo" instead of "int \foo" [edit: \ should be asterisk. can't make it show one, though] You are indeed crazy, or at least misguided and confusing. because int* a, b; implies a and b or both of type "int* ", but actually, a is of type "int* " and b is of type "int". The second form is visually consistent, because: int *a, b; Says "*a" is of type "int", and also "b" is of type "int".
acheron 15y ago
I've been using one of the "Proggy" fonts from http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download for awhile now... I don't remember which one specifically, I think "Proggy Clean". This one looks good too, and maybe it'd be better than Proggy or one of the others around, but I don't think it's $220,000 better.
achompas 15y ago
Let's delay arguments about whether one should change fonts or not [0] and think about crowdfunding applied to design work. We should be more interested in whether this will work, and why or why not. Last summer, Hyperakt [1] crowd-funded a beautiful radial depiction of the 2010 World Cup brackets [2]. I paid $25 for a great poster [3], and now Deroy has a new fan. That project worked for the same reason all Kickstarter projects work: if the project succeeds, users and producers exchange money for goods. If the market doesn't validate your project, consumers aren't committed to pay and producers don't reap any benefits. This is a great model for project planning and idea validation. On the other hand, this project extracts consumer rents immediately. If Fabrizio doesn't hit the $220k goal [4], users only get an option to purchase a license for $100 minus their contribution. No repercussions for the producer--he gets paid regardless. This is fine for licensing an existing font, but it sucks for spec work or otherwise non-existent work. I'm sure everyone has a few questions about the amount he's charging. [5] However, we should focus on how Kickstarter provides a consumer-friendly market while this project exists on a producer-friendly market. These are some great introductory economic concepts. EDIT: actually, each market has its own benefits. With Kickstarter, you can obtain market validation for free (or cheap). With IndieGogo, you can guarantee payment on existing products. ------- [0] I took an hour to switch from Monaco to Anonymous Pro; now I wish I hadn't wasted that hour but at least I'm set for life. [1] http://hyperakt.com/ http://hyperakt.com/ [2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-cup-radial-bracket-poster http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-cup-... [3] Even more beautiful after La Furia Roja took the Cup! [4] Btw: ouch. [5] Are we paying for the 4 years of work he's put in? Hasn't he made money from other licenses already? There are probably some obvious answers I'm missing out on.
- fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
  Dude, you are distrustful... it's not the case: I'm at the 50% of the work with PragmataPro, anyone can realize it just by looking at the screenshots. If I wanted to escape with the loot I would not be so stupid to draw about 1600 glyphs spending 3 years of my life. Revenue from sales of licenses are not sufficient to cover even 10% of the time I used to arrive here. Then came the piracy that has stopped the sales. My dream is to finish this project getting the appropriate reward for my hard work. Am I wrong to dream this?
yan 15y ago
Just wanted to chime in: I paid Fabrizio for PragmataPro last year and haven't regretted it a bit. Maybe paying $100+ for a font isn't for everyone, but my entire life revolves around looking at fixed-width fonts and it's important to me. After trying almost everything else out there, Pragmata/PragmataPro feel much better and make me happier looking at lots of text.
- vl 15y ago
  Did you have a change to compare it to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono? How does it fare?
alphadogg 15y ago
What's wrong with using current open fonts like Droid Sans? I particularly like the dotted-zero version here: http://blog.cosmix.org/2009/01/25/a-dotted-zero-droid-sans-mono/ http://blog.cosmix.org/2009/01/25/a-dotted-zero-droid-sans-m...
sp332 15y ago
Having both Latin and Cyrillic scripts done well in a single monospace font is extremely rare. Even Ubunto Mono (which is brand-new and still in active development) is having trouble, and they're professionals who take suggestions from users very seriously. e.g. http://blog.cosmix.org/2011/10/04/ubuntu-mono-the-gamma-travesty/ http://blog.cosmix.org/2011/10/04/ubuntu-mono-the-gamma-trav... . No one has said publicly how much Canonical is paying Dalton Maag to make the Ubuntu font family, but I'm sure it's a lot more than $220,000.
- fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
  FINALLY! A person that arrived to the heart of the problem! I gave my best effort to achieve the perfect balance of symbols, letters Western, Cyrillic, Greek. And someone has noticed! I tried financiers from Google, Canonical, Apple, IBM, SAS, Microsoft and many other companies with computer connection without success, knowing that these companies have funded other projects of the same caliber of PragmataPro. I keep hoping to find greater understanding between professionals like you. Don’t let me down!
  - prakashk 15y ago
    > I gave my best effort to achieve .... And someone has noticed! Perhaps if your campaign page had some verbiage about this font's special features and how it is really different than others, it would help more people to notice?
    - fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
      I'll do it. Thanks for this idea
sp332 15y ago
If anyone's wondering what the color scheme is, I believe it's Solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized (on HN previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393976 )
- yankcrime 15y ago
  It is - it's actually my screenshot!
swah 15y ago
Folks have launched impressive projects with 10K there. I understand he wants to pay a salary retroactively, but there is no way this is going to make 3.5K per day.
moonboots 15y ago
I don't think this font is ideal for widescreen monitors. Vertical space is more scarce than horizontal space, so a font that increases the former at the expense of the latter doesn't use space efficiently. Leaving space usage aside, is there evidence that a narrow font is more readable?
mrgoldenbrown 15y ago
Does anybody have any data on how many people program in greek, cyrillic, or hebrew characters? I suspect that 90% of programs that are out there could be written with 10% of the glyphs that he is proposing to hand hint. Why not focus on those and reduce the price accordingly?
- p0nce 15y ago
  Do we really care for 9pt and 24pt either?
- jablan 15y ago
  There are, for example, comments and string literals, which may be non-english. Also, people use monospaced fonts for all kinds of things aside from programming (for example, my bash spits out errors in cyrillic). And if I pay for a font, I would expect to be able to use it everywhere.
chadnickbok 15y ago
800 days working without knowing whether or not there was actually a way to make any money? Lets _not_ talk about whether or not this will work. Lets talk about how this is absolutely not, under any circumstances, a productive way to spend one's time. 187 people bought the previous version of this font. Do some sales projections, estimate market size, review the competition (such as the Ubuntu monospace fonts), talk to the existing customers about the features they actually _use_ everyday (hebrew characters? really?), and even I can conclude that the market isn't going to be viable for the given business plan. I'm going to call Eric Ries, and ask him nicely if he can send you a copy of his book. Cause' you my friend, are doing it _wrong_ .
kenjackson 15y ago
Fabrizio, have you thought about pitching this to Apple? Seriously. I personally don't get it, but it seems like the type of thing that Jobs would appreciate (if he liked it) and say it was worth the money. Ask Apple if they'd buy it for XCode, so all Apple devs could have it.
- krevis 15y ago
  Apple just introduced a new monospaced typeface in 10.6, Menlo. (It's the default in Terminal and Xcode.) Seems unlikely they'd want to bother changing it again so soon.
- fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
  I submitted to all the big companies computer related, Apple included. They ignored PragmataPro™. For this I need of your understanding and your support because I'm sure you know better than them what's a good programming font.
necenzurat 15y ago
Off topic: is it just me or why does indiegogo.com resembles so much like userscripts.org
kreek 15y ago
PragmataPro looks good, but when ever this topic comes up I always end up going back to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/ttf-bitstream-vera/1.10/ http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/ttf-bitstream-vera/1....
itsnotvalid 15y ago
What was the program being used for designing the font?
itsnotvalid 15y ago
Always wonder how a new user of hacker news get front page to h'm so easily. Seems to easy to game.
meric 15y ago
13% fees, 43% taxes: Shouldn't the 13% fees be tax deductible, because they were incurred as a result of earning the revenue?
micheljansen 15y ago
This method of project funding suffers from an unfortunate separation of "pain" and reward. I have to hand over my money now, knowing that it might lead to the font being available in 800 days. That is a long time. Compare this with two major alternatives to this model: Kickstarter and things like the Humble Indie Bundle. In one, I pledge money now for some future benefit, but I do so knowing that I only end up paying if the project reaches enough support and funding. This feels safe: I can pledge however I think the result is worth, because I only pay if it succeeds. In the other, I can get my reward immediately (instant gratification!), but I can choose how much to pay for it. The problem of Indiegogo, is that I have to pay now, but I cannot be sure that I actually get anything in return (a discount on a license is not enough). This means the risk of investment is much higher. I did pledge some money, but not what I would pay for the font were it either in Kickstarter form or through a "Humble Bundle" kind of model. I am sure I am not the only one. To turn this into some useful advice for Fabrizio: How about giving donators preview access to the unfinished font? This brings the reward closer to the donation :)
- fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
  I thinked a lot of time at a solution to this problem and the best one I found it's this: In case the campaign does not reach the objective, I will offer to every contributors the regular license of PragmataPro™ at €20 (instead of €170) also if the contributor donate also just $1 only. At the end of this campaign every contributors can claims this offer. But please don’t offer anonymously if you want this discount. It's now written in the fundrasing page of Indiegogo and for me it's like to be signed with blood...
fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
IMPORTANT UPDATE: In case the campaign does not reach the objective, I will offer to every contributors the regular license of PragmataPro™ at €20 (instead of €170) also if the contributor donate also just $1 only. At the end of this campaign every contributors can claims this offer. But please don’t offer anonymously if you want this discount.

143 points by multispace 15y ago

There is now a fundraising project going on for PragmataPro to make it available for free under a Creative Commons license

rdtsc 15y ago

The font looks good. But does it really solve a problem most people need solved? I don't remember last time I though "Hmm, if only I had a better font, I would work so much faster/better...". I did think that when using Linux 10 years ago when my fonts were blurry and fuzzy but not now. Another way to put it, even if that font was available for free now I don't know I'd bother installing it just because ... there is the step of installing it. I would just rather pick a font from my default OS font choices.

mrleinad 15y ago
Remember that most of the time, people don't know what they want until they see it.
- praptak 15y ago
  Yeah, I have tested this hypothesis on myself. I have tried lots of fonts touted as the best for programming and found exactly zero difference. Time wasted, chalked up to experience. I think that anyone considering a donation should at least try the freely available fonts to see whether they make any difference.
  - peteforde 15y ago
    Why are you so determined to damn this effort? Can you imagine launching a weekend web startup project and having someone on here to look elsewhere before considering a donation? People starting businesses come here to be encouraged, and this guy isn't doing anything wrong. In fact, I wish more creatives would consider these sorts of alternative approaches to patronage.
    - maratd 15y ago
      > Why are you so determined to damn this effort? It's important to give people honest and clear feedback. By blindly encouraging them, you are doing them a disservice. Perhaps he can fine-tune his effort. Perhaps his talents are best applied elsewhere. You simply don't know. If his skin isn't thick enough to accept honest criticism, he shouldn't be starting or doing anything on his own. Honest feedback is important.
    - rdtsc 15y ago
      Sorry, perhaps it was my fault by starting on the criticism. It was just meant to be an honest observation. I think the font looks great and I appreciate the effort and time it took to create this font. However I see it more as an art piece. Just like an artist might have painstakingly created a body of work for 5 years, just the effort put into it, makes it impressive. To someone (a collector, a gallery) the piece might be worth $200,000, to me though, it might be or worth $0, just because I don't like it or I am shopping for utilitarian things at the moment. "Would this piece help me code faster?" kind of reasoning. So maybe it is just the wrong market. There might also be a luxury market out there for fonts, someone who has the latest and greatest set-up and has deep pockets who just needs something extra ? A book publisher? An OS vendor?
prototypef 15y ago
I agree. Most modern OS monospace fonts (Consolas, Monaco, Ubuntu Mono) are more than enough for any kind of programming. I don't really see the benefit of going out and trying new fonts. IMHO font size and color highlighting (color schemes?) play a much bigger role in making my work on a text editor be faster/better. Of course, it's a matter of personal taste, I did see one guy using Arial as a font on his text editor once...
kellishaver 15y ago
I agree. I'm one of those people who is very picky about their fonts, and I can't recall ever paying over $10 for a font for my own, personal, non-design related needs. In my case, it's due to the fact that I have poor eyesight, so having the right font can really make a big difference, but there are probably thousands of free/low-cost options out there. It was hard to find a monospace font that looked great at larger sizes (14pt), but in the end I settled on Luxi Mono (http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Luxi-Mono http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Luxi-Mono). It actually doesn't look that great in their previews, but renders much more smoothly in my editor. This makes me think that the operating system/rendering engine probably plays a bigger role.

stdbrouw 15y ago

There are just so many wonderful monospace fonts already out there that either come with your OS (Monaco, Consolas, Ubuntu Mono) or are free that I don't know why I should bother. People still pay for fonts instead of downloading cheap knockoffs because of ligatures, a wide amount of characters and meticulous kerning. All things that a monospaced font doesn't need. The one thing this font seems to add is that it is supposed to look good without font smoothing. But then, why would anyone care about that in a world where we always render fonts with anti-aliasing anyway?

fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
True. There are a lot good monospaced font but it's impossible for me working at screen with these cool fonts for this I designed PragmataPro. Tastes are tastes. All the glyphs of PragmataPro are designed under suggestions of programmers. In the set there are many glyphs ignored by other monospaced font designers, because I designed this font with programmers for programmers. PragmataPro are designed to work with and without antilaliasing. And it works
- moe 15y ago
  And it works Apparently not on the Mac. The font looks quite terrible in your own Mac screenshot, there is visible blur at least in the letters w,m and T.
  - jcitme 15y ago
    Well, he did say it's only 50% done. If it mostly works on Windows, porting it to mac shouldn't be hard...
- tripzilch 15y ago
  Could you give some explicit examples where you think PragmataPro is better than, say, Consolas? (except for the APL glyphs, I'm not sure if Consolas has those) Also, what possessed you to make a monospaced programming font condensed? Squeezing the proportions that way either allows you more characters on a line (bad programming practice) or less lines on a screen (also not good). PS in your screenshot, the special ligature things such as the smiley and the (P), are partly cut off.

DanBC 15y ago

43% in Italian taxes? That kind of sucks. He needs an accountant to give advice about (legally) reducing the tax burden to something more reasonable.

libria 15y ago
In the US, I think a 220k income would be taxed at ~40% state + federal. And yes, that does suck.
- DanBC 15y ago
  In the UK someone would start a company, and be an employee of that company with a wage, and make themselves the only shareholder, and then an accountant would say "pay yourself some dividends now". At least that's what people used to do, but I guess it's been stopped now.
  - petercooper 15y ago
    Nope, it's still standard practice. You're still going to be paying at least 20% corporation tax on the profits though and then probably 22.5% on the dividend itself.
  - kls 15y ago
    We have a similar entity here in the States, it is called and S-Corp. It is designed for single owner businesses and does allow the owner to dodge some tax burden. Specifically the double taxation on income that a single owner would receive if there where under the rules of a C-Corp as well as some unemployment and FICA.
  - calpaterson 15y ago
    I'm pretty sure this practice has not been stopped.
    - DanBC 15y ago
      I think I'm getting confused IR35, which made contracting less attractive.

struppi 15y ago

If the 800 days are work days this means 4 years of work. ~200000 dollars really is not much for this time frame - you could even call it a bargain :) Anyway, I think I won't donate since I feel like I might lose the money when the goal is not reached (I don't really want a discount on the license fee).

wccrawford 15y ago
Yeah, I don't gamble. I'm willing to commit to kickstarter because I'll get my money back if the thing falls through. But whenever they say my money will go towards a discount (or a charity) if the deal fails, I never go for it. I'm not sure I've ever seen one succeed in that situation, actually.
- davidu 15y ago
  What? You get your money back with Kickstarter? I've never heard of that... I'm pretty sure I've lost a few hundred bucks on failed kick-starters... I mean, they meet the goal, but the person never delivers.
  - ceejayoz 15y ago
    You get your money back if they don't meet their fundraising goal.
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    Well yeah, if the person doesn't deliver, you've helped fund them, but get nothing back. That's why kickstarter projects aren't supposed to supply actual value for the pledge. A lot of the latest one offer the product as a bonus, but don't tell you that you won't get the product if they fail.
    - davidu 15y ago
      Oh, I see. I guess I've only backed products or software or things where there was a deliverable... even a book once!

hipsterelitist 15y ago

4 years and over 200k dollars seems like quite a bit. I understand being meticulous, but this is a bit absurd.

shin_lao 15y ago
That's less than $ 25,000 / year, or around $ 120 / day. I don't think you can find a decent designer for $ 120 / day.
- gk1 15y ago
  Nor would he _want_ to hire anyone to design a monospaced font for four years.
  - moe 15y ago
    Nor is it very likely that he worked four years, every single day, on this font.
    - peteforde 15y ago
      If you're genuinely interested, I'd suggest you check out the movie Helvetica. Fonts often take thousands of man-hours to complete, and faces with extended characters are much more involved. What this designer might lack in business chops he makes up in generousity. How many competent designers are willing to do something for $25k a year?
antidaily 15y ago
4 years as a side project would be my guess.
trin_ 15y ago
he actually elaborated on that and said that after fees and taxes it would be $96000 and that it would last him for about 800 days to design every charackter.
ajross 15y ago

chrisjsmithuk 15y ago

That's not going to happen.

jeremygallant 15y ago

$20 RAISED OF $220,000 GOAL Yeah, I think I'm going to pass on this one.

aggarwalachal 15y ago
come on.. everyone starts at $0

tyw 15y ago

I downloaded the screenshots of this font and have to admit I wish I could use it right now. Looks pretty good to me. That said, the monetary goal seems a bit lofty considering how many people this would really solve a need for. Still, if the fundraising were arranged on something like kickstarter where I'd get my donation back if it fails to reach the goal I'd kick in a bit. Not terribly interested in a discount on the other license.

bjornsteffanson 15y ago

While depth and ambition of this project is impressive (take a look at the screenshots in the .zip), I think the goal seems a bit lofty, particularly when there are many more-than-adequate free/open-source monospace fonts available.

runn1ng 15y ago

I prefer the coding font Anonymous Pro (has nothing to do with the hacktivist group) - it's located here and it's for free. http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html Personally, PragmataPro looks too condensed for me. It is probably more "economical" to use condensed fonts, but to me, it is really not very readable.

aggarwalachal 15y ago

This is actually very expensive... If I made a font like this, I would rather keep it as a donation, as the font was developed out of free will. BTW I use Menlo...

natesm 15y ago

Why is it so narrow? It reminds me of doing things like "} else {" in code, packing lots of content onto the screen and removing all readability.

tripzilch 15y ago
Because in the 90s textmode screens looked like that. Except back in those days it was done to be able to fit 80 characters on a line instead of just 40. Today it enables programmers to fit WAY more characters on a line. It's like, the perfect oneliner font.
sophacles 15y ago
wait... what wrong with "} else {" ? It provides a simple and easy grouping of blocks.
- natesm 15y ago
  This is obviously personal preference and opinion and all of that, but that's the whole point of discussion, so: if (something) { something(); } else { something_else(); } vs. if (something) { something(); } else { something_else(); } To me, the first one is chaotic. It's not so bad like that, but throw in a loop (as well as the external function declaration) and it's a complete mess. The second one is orderly. Block separation is very clear, and each brace is matched by an equal. IMO, if you need to worry about how many lines of code fit on your screen, it's probably time to refactor (or upgrade from a netbook). I might be crazy though, because I write int* foo instead of int *foo And no one does that. Pointers are a type!
  - beagle3 15y ago
    You might have a point, but your arguments are inconsistent with each other; You say > IMO, if you need to worry about how many lines of code fit on your screen, it's probably time to refactor (or upgrade from a netbook). But also: > Block separation is very clear, and each brace is matched by an equal. Block separation is equally clear in the first example (same column means same block), and if your IDE can't show you matches if you're lost, it's time to upgrade from ed or edlin. Also, > I might be crazy though, because I write "int* foo" instead of "int \foo" [edit: \ should be asterisk. can't make it show one, though] You are indeed crazy, or at least misguided and confusing. because int* a, b; implies a and b or both of type "int* ", but actually, a is of type "int* " and b is of type "int". The second form is visually consistent, because: int *a, b; Says "*a" is of type "int", and also "b" is of type "int".

acheron 15y ago

I've been using one of the "Proggy" fonts from http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download for awhile now... I don't remember which one specifically, I think "Proggy Clean". This one looks good too, and maybe it'd be better than Proggy or one of the others around, but I don't think it's $220,000 better.

achompas 15y ago

Let's delay arguments about whether one should change fonts or not [0] and think about crowdfunding applied to design work. We should be more interested in whether this will work, and why or why not. Last summer, Hyperakt [1] crowd-funded a beautiful radial depiction of the 2010 World Cup brackets [2]. I paid $25 for a great poster [3], and now Deroy has a new fan. That project worked for the same reason all Kickstarter projects work: if the project succeeds, users and producers exchange money for goods. If the market doesn't validate your project, consumers aren't committed to pay and producers don't reap any benefits. This is a great model for project planning and idea validation. On the other hand, this project extracts consumer rents immediately. If Fabrizio doesn't hit the $220k goal [4], users only get an option to purchase a license for $100 minus their contribution. No repercussions for the producer--he gets paid regardless. This is fine for licensing an existing font, but it sucks for spec work or otherwise non-existent work. I'm sure everyone has a few questions about the amount he's charging. [5] However, we should focus on how Kickstarter provides a consumer-friendly market while this project exists on a producer-friendly market. These are some great introductory economic concepts. EDIT: actually, each market has its own benefits. With Kickstarter, you can obtain market validation for free (or cheap). With IndieGogo, you can guarantee payment on existing products. ------- [0] I took an hour to switch from Monaco to Anonymous Pro; now I wish I hadn't wasted that hour but at least I'm set for life. [1] http://hyperakt.com/ http://hyperakt.com/ [2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-cup-radial-bracket-poster http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-cup-... [3] Even more beautiful after La Furia Roja took the Cup! [4] Btw: ouch. [5] Are we paying for the 4 years of work he's put in? Hasn't he made money from other licenses already? There are probably some obvious answers I'm missing out on.

fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
Dude, you are distrustful... it's not the case: I'm at the 50% of the work with PragmataPro, anyone can realize it just by looking at the screenshots. If I wanted to escape with the loot I would not be so stupid to draw about 1600 glyphs spending 3 years of my life. Revenue from sales of licenses are not sufficient to cover even 10% of the time I used to arrive here. Then came the piracy that has stopped the sales. My dream is to finish this project getting the appropriate reward for my hard work. Am I wrong to dream this?

yan 15y ago

Just wanted to chime in: I paid Fabrizio for PragmataPro last year and haven't regretted it a bit. Maybe paying $100+ for a font isn't for everyone, but my entire life revolves around looking at fixed-width fonts and it's important to me. After trying almost everything else out there, Pragmata/PragmataPro feel much better and make me happier looking at lots of text.

vl 15y ago
Did you have a change to compare it to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono? How does it fare?

alphadogg 15y ago

What's wrong with using current open fonts like Droid Sans? I particularly like the dotted-zero version here: http://blog.cosmix.org/2009/01/25/a-dotted-zero-droid-sans-mono/ http://blog.cosmix.org/2009/01/25/a-dotted-zero-droid-sans-m...

sp332 15y ago

Having both Latin and Cyrillic scripts done well in a single monospace font is extremely rare. Even Ubunto Mono (which is brand-new and still in active development) is having trouble, and they're professionals who take suggestions from users very seriously. e.g. http://blog.cosmix.org/2011/10/04/ubuntu-mono-the-gamma-travesty/ http://blog.cosmix.org/2011/10/04/ubuntu-mono-the-gamma-trav... . No one has said publicly how much Canonical is paying Dalton Maag to make the Ubuntu font family, but I'm sure it's a lot more than $220,000.

fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
FINALLY! A person that arrived to the heart of the problem! I gave my best effort to achieve the perfect balance of symbols, letters Western, Cyrillic, Greek. And someone has noticed! I tried financiers from Google, Canonical, Apple, IBM, SAS, Microsoft and many other companies with computer connection without success, knowing that these companies have funded other projects of the same caliber of PragmataPro. I keep hoping to find greater understanding between professionals like you. Don’t let me down!
- prakashk 15y ago
  > I gave my best effort to achieve .... And someone has noticed! Perhaps if your campaign page had some verbiage about this font's special features and how it is really different than others, it would help more people to notice?
  - fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
    I'll do it. Thanks for this idea

sp332 15y ago

If anyone's wondering what the color scheme is, I believe it's Solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized (on HN previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393976 )

yankcrime 15y ago
It is - it's actually my screenshot!

swah 15y ago

Folks have launched impressive projects with 10K there. I understand he wants to pay a salary retroactively, but there is no way this is going to make 3.5K per day.

moonboots 15y ago

I don't think this font is ideal for widescreen monitors. Vertical space is more scarce than horizontal space, so a font that increases the former at the expense of the latter doesn't use space efficiently. Leaving space usage aside, is there evidence that a narrow font is more readable?

mrgoldenbrown 15y ago

Does anybody have any data on how many people program in greek, cyrillic, or hebrew characters? I suspect that 90% of programs that are out there could be written with 10% of the glyphs that he is proposing to hand hint. Why not focus on those and reduce the price accordingly?

p0nce 15y ago
Do we really care for 9pt and 24pt either?
jablan 15y ago
There are, for example, comments and string literals, which may be non-english. Also, people use monospaced fonts for all kinds of things aside from programming (for example, my bash spits out errors in cyrillic). And if I pay for a font, I would expect to be able to use it everywhere.

chadnickbok 15y ago

800 days working without knowing whether or not there was actually a way to make any money? Lets _not_ talk about whether or not this will work. Lets talk about how this is absolutely not, under any circumstances, a productive way to spend one's time. 187 people bought the previous version of this font. Do some sales projections, estimate market size, review the competition (such as the Ubuntu monospace fonts), talk to the existing customers about the features they actually _use_ everyday (hebrew characters? really?), and even I can conclude that the market isn't going to be viable for the given business plan. I'm going to call Eric Ries, and ask him nicely if he can send you a copy of his book. Cause' you my friend, are doing it _wrong_ .

kenjackson 15y ago

Fabrizio, have you thought about pitching this to Apple? Seriously. I personally don't get it, but it seems like the type of thing that Jobs would appreciate (if he liked it) and say it was worth the money. Ask Apple if they'd buy it for XCode, so all Apple devs could have it.

krevis 15y ago
Apple just introduced a new monospaced typeface in 10.6, Menlo. (It's the default in Terminal and Xcode.) Seems unlikely they'd want to bother changing it again so soon.
fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
I submitted to all the big companies computer related, Apple included. They ignored PragmataPro™. For this I need of your understanding and your support because I'm sure you know better than them what's a good programming font.

necenzurat 15y ago

Off topic: is it just me or why does indiegogo.com resembles so much like userscripts.org

kreek 15y ago

PragmataPro looks good, but when ever this topic comes up I always end up going back to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/ttf-bitstream-vera/1.10/ http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/ttf-bitstream-vera/1....

itsnotvalid 15y ago

What was the program being used for designing the font?

itsnotvalid 15y ago

Always wonder how a new user of hacker news get front page to h'm so easily. Seems to easy to game.

meric 15y ago

13% fees, 43% taxes: Shouldn't the 13% fees be tax deductible, because they were incurred as a result of earning the revenue?

micheljansen 15y ago

This method of project funding suffers from an unfortunate separation of "pain" and reward. I have to hand over my money now, knowing that it might lead to the font being available in 800 days. That is a long time. Compare this with two major alternatives to this model: Kickstarter and things like the Humble Indie Bundle. In one, I pledge money now for some future benefit, but I do so knowing that I only end up paying if the project reaches enough support and funding. This feels safe: I can pledge however I think the result is worth, because I only pay if it succeeds. In the other, I can get my reward immediately (instant gratification!), but I can choose how much to pay for it. The problem of Indiegogo, is that I have to pay now, but I cannot be sure that I actually get anything in return (a discount on a license is not enough). This means the risk of investment is much higher. I did pledge some money, but not what I would pay for the font were it either in Kickstarter form or through a "Humble Bundle" kind of model. I am sure I am not the only one. To turn this into some useful advice for Fabrizio: How about giving donators preview access to the unfinished font? This brings the reward closer to the donation :)

fabrizioschiavi 15y ago
I thinked a lot of time at a solution to this problem and the best one I found it's this: In case the campaign does not reach the objective, I will offer to every contributors the regular license of PragmataPro™ at €20 (instead of €170) also if the contributor donate also just $1 only. At the end of this campaign every contributors can claims this offer. But please don’t offer anonymously if you want this discount. It's now written in the fundrasing page of Indiegogo and for me it's like to be signed with blood...

fabrizioschiavi 15y ago

IMPORTANT UPDATE: In case the campaign does not reach the objective, I will offer to every contributors the regular license of PragmataPro™ at €20 (instead of €170) also if the contributor donate also just $1 only. At the end of this campaign every contributors can claims this offer. But please don’t offer anonymously if you want this discount.