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Commit Mono – Neutral programming typeface

231 points by ecliptik 3y ago

pb060 3y ago
Does anyone know why it looks much better on VSC than WebStorm on Mac? Would love to love IntelliJ products but I can't stand the way they render text.
- bongobingo1 3y ago
  You might have to enable/disable (subpixel?) anti aliasing?
  - pb060 3y ago
    I couldn't find that option, I think they removed it. I improved it by changing the theme, dark themes seem to render a bolder text.
- bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
  I'd imagine that IntelliJ products use whatever text renderer java has instead of the system renderer.
zhangsen 3y ago
This font is not recognized as a monospaced font by both putty and mintty on my Windows 10, even after a reboot. // sorry for the initial typo of mintty as minty
Zizizizz 3y ago
Very impressive. Currently been using a custom version of Iosevka to mimic Pragmata but this looks - to me at least - an improvement on Fira and Jetbrains.
- lwhsiao 3y ago
  I'm a huge fan of the compact width of Iosevka. Makes my terminal feel wider.
lifthrasiir 3y ago
> The most effective font is the one you don’t notice. No super high x-height, no geometric construction, no eye-catching design and no confusing ligatures. Designed to be neutral and anonymous, Commit Mono is quietly useful. Thank you for this memorandum, and especially for "no confusing ligatures".
- pavlov 3y ago
  It’s true, some monospace fonts have absurd ligatures enabled by default. The craziest thing I’ve seen was a single-width “fi” ligature. The only point of this ligature in proportional fonts is to prevent the dot on the ‘i’ from overlapping with the hook of the ‘f’, and that by definition can’t happen in monospace! But you madmen decided to create a single “fi” glyph, like it was a letter of its own. Imagine that on a typewriter.
  - thristian 3y ago
    Unicode U+FB01 is the fi ligature as a single precombined codepoint. You're right - it doesn't make any sense to have a monospaced glyph for that ligature, or for fl or ffi or many other codepoints in the Alphabetic Presentation Forms block. But those codepoints exist, and somebody might print them to the terminal, and a terminal has to represent every non-CJK glyph as a single character cell...
    - lifthrasiir 3y ago
      > a terminal has to represent every non-CJK glyph as a single character cell... Not necessarily. Unicode has a dedicated property called East Asian Width [1] which effectively affects the terminal rendering, and "Ambiguous" characters like arrows can be configured as full-width (because CJK users expect that). Even when the configuration itself doesn't exist, the font metric may be used to infer the glyph width in this case. [1] https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr11/ https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr11/
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    IMO, even as someone who really likes ligatures in general, in a monospace font the invariant of 1 character text - 1 character displayed - 1 character width must be upheld. I'm all for => getting turned into a 2 character wide arrow, or === and == getting little dots above them and whatever. But never, under any circumstances, should my font change character alignment. Personally I've been using a lot of Cascadia Code lately. Big fan.
andreicek 3y ago
Love the font, don't care for the website -- it was very hard to navigate.
- agos 3y ago
  agreed - the contrast is so low that I double checked if my content blocker was removing some cookie modal while leaving an opaque gray backdrop. Then I focused on a different window and then an opaque gray backdrop appeared, for reasons I can't imagine, with a message saying "Click to focus page". Not the best introduction for such an everyday tool
  - tommica 3y ago
    I also had to check if my adblocker was blocking something extra - this site is definitely a unique experience when it comes to using and navigating it.
cjs_ac 3y ago
For those who are unsure why 'neutrality' is a desirable quality in a typeface, I refer you to the analogy of the crystal goblet by Beatrice Warde: > Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favourite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain. > Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates fingerprints on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and the fiery hearth of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-pages? Again: The glass is colourless or at the most only faintly tinged in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its colour and is impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted; you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader subconsciously worried by the fear of 'doubling' lines, reading three words as one, and so forth. > Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else. The 'stunt typographer' learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair-spaces. Nobody (save the other craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.
botanical 3y ago
To me this looks almost exactly like Iosevka. Maybe slightly wider and rounder. But it looks good.
- ink_13 3y ago
  Interesting, it reminded me of Inconsolata
snitty 3y ago
I cannot unzip the download on a Mac…
- rifty 3y ago
  Had the same issue with built in Archive Utility but I got it to unzip with the app The Unarchiver. The regular font files work but it does say this about all of the Italic font files: >Could not extract "CommitMono-450-Italic.otf" from the "CommitMono.zip" archive: The archive file is incomplete
  - adlpz 3y ago
    Same situation, I unzipped it with the built-in `unzip`, but the italics are corrupted. I think the ZIP file is just broken.
    - thex10 3y ago
      Thanks for the `unzip` tip. I find the same result. Maybe a problem with customization around italics?
- jamies 3y ago
  I found this on their FAQ: "There have been some problems with downloading .zip files from Safari. The download is tested to work in Chrome and FireFox."
  - bongobingo1 3y ago
    Truly the Internet Explorer of the modern age. (Perhaps this is Safari passing the download through some more rigorous "malware checker" on macOS that Chrome/Firefox doesn't have access too?)
    - bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
      There is JS that combines the files into a zip before downloading. I'd imagine that it's that code whose behavior differs between browsers.
danpalmer 3y ago
The typeface looks nice, but I first opened the site on mobile and it told me to use keys to navigate, effectively locking me out from browsing it. I then opened it on desktop, tried to scroll and realised that it uses WASD keys which are all over my keyboard. The scroll wheel on my mouse/trackpad/etc don't work. As a user of a non-QWERTY layout this sucks. Then I tried to use the text zoom and while it documents this as being controlled by + and -, it's actually controlled by _ and /. This suggests careless handling of input. Why does this matter? I think a very important thing for typefaces is accessibility and coverage of edge-cases in language and usage. Covering characters that are used in different languages (even just punctuation that isn't common in English), ensuring readability for those without perfect vision, and so on, all require care and attention to a wide range of concerns. This website doesn't instil confidence that the designers of the typeface have taken this approach, and in fact the interaction model (which I actually really like) gives the impression of style over substance.
- yboris 3y ago
  Minor frustration -- I'm reading the directions to install, but when I focus out (to update my VSCode settings as instructed), the screen goes into low contrast, making it harder to read the directions.
- PostOnce 3y ago
  I have a normal qwerty layout and opened it on a laptop and my first thought was "why the hell cant i scroll?" It's a stupid website. It took more work to make it shittier to use. It's a loss for the author AND the viewer. Counterproductive. The font seems decent but I closed the tab because I don't have this kind of time.
- roda73 3y ago
  It's not very nice for mobile views but I do like seeing something new every once in a while.
- dvtkrlbs 3y ago
  The top seciton names are clickable on mobile
- 3y ago
holliplex 3y ago
Is this supposed to be so dim in light mode? It looks like it's covered in an invisible modal's backdrop.
- cantSpellSober 3y ago
  I had a difficult time reading this page, the low contrast reduces legibility. Surprising for a site focused on fine details of type and design.
- wrs 3y ago
  The font is nice but the site’s contrast is ridiculous. I had to hit F12 and fix the CSS to be able to see anything.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xk_id 3y ago
It’s quiet, unopinionated and calming. It doesn’t draw attention to itself at all. I like it a lot.
karmakaze 3y ago
[To author] There's a typo on the "04 Intelligent" page: "effecient". Actual program listings would make for better examples. Btw, I use a non-Qwerty layout so WASD is nonsense to me.
- a1o 3y ago
  Hey, do the non-QWERTY have some other default that makes sense to offer as an option to WASD or is it better to have the alternative be it's configurable?
  - aoeui-dhtns 3y ago
    I would personally go for configurable. I use the keys that are equivalent to QWERTY’s ESDF keys so that I never have to move my hands from home row for movement in a game. When moving through text I prefer vim keybinds.
    - a1o 3y ago
      Thanks, I will will try to budget time for my little games for configurable keybinds, since they use very few keys I had so far hardcoded WASD but never thought about other keyboard layouts. Thanks for the input!
theSherwood 3y ago
I like the typeface. The website navigation is really fun. A little confusing until you are used to it, but I like the logic of it. Still unclear which widgets can receive input other than navigation. It would be nice to have some clear visual indicator. Some widgets use arrow keys to change state (tabs, toggles, etc.) rather than just move focus around, which I found surprising. Seems like state changes ought to require a distinct input from the focus-affecting input. Some cases certainly blur the lines, such as when navigating over glyphs and seeing captions on focus changes. On the whole, I really enjoyed it. I wish more UIs would experiment with this kind of stuff.
fwlr 3y ago
‘Smart kerning’ is brilliant, and the fact this looks like a more normal Source Code Pro is winning me over as well.
- AlanYx 3y ago
  I'm really intrigued by the smart kerning idea. Are there any other monospace fonts that do this?
- cantSpellSober 3y ago
  Is there a term for "smart kerning" this that digital typographers use? Is it a feature of OpenType? Is it similar to/controlled be the font-kerning property in CSS?
  - kroltan 3y ago
    > Smart kerning works by looking at single letter between two other letters. If the other letters are in different width classes, the middle letter will slide closer to the narrow letter. From this paragraph it sounds like they're using ligatures, which are rules of "when this character sequence appears, use this glyph instead." But A) I'm no OTF expert, and B) I haven't dissected the font files.
    - __jonas 3y ago
      The font files with smart kerning don't contain any ligatures. It seems they are using glyph substitution tables but I also didn't look in too much detail
Brometheus 3y ago
Commit Mono, hmm? I like it.
ctenb 3y ago
Are there any sample code snippets to view how it looks in an editor? Can't seem to find any
- kps 3y ago
  The ‘07 Customize’ page has code samples.
eyegor 3y ago
This looks pretty good. Here's another one to check out if you want something thinner (more terminal space). https://mplusfonts.github.io/#mpluscode https://mplusfonts.github.io/#mpluscode
- fold3 3y ago
  I really like it, it's fresh and friendly. it has a narrow option to have that compact spacing like iosevka which is my favorite. I can't use regular width font anymore after being use to narrow width.
  - bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
    Agree, if Commit Mono had a narrow width, it'd replace Iosevka for me in a heartbeat
pc86 3y ago
> Use keyboard to control website No thank you
vehemenz 3y ago
Let's see if this can unseat Comic Code. We are truly living in the golden age of programming typefaces. Ignore the haters. The website is lots of fun.
anon115 3y ago
so sexy and non attention seeking but simple... trying it out. Fira Code is my main.
lagniappe 3y ago
I like the font, and the creativity of the website. Thanks, author, if you're watching!
- enikolajsen 3y ago
  Thank you so much!
marban 3y ago
I've tried every mono under the sun but I have yet to find one that can hold a candle to PragmataPro Mono Liga.
riwsky 3y ago
Whether or not one personally likes the idiosyncratic navigation, it’s inconsistent with the font’s normcore ethos
- enikolajsen 3y ago
  You're so right, but if I made the site boring people wouldn't have anything to complain about.
  - kard 3y ago
    True.
  - erichocean 3y ago
    Just an FYI, some features don't work with Dvorak keyboards. For instance, the "I" key doesn't work (I assume you are using keyCodes, not strings, for characters). That is, it I press "C" (in Dvorak), I get italics on page 2. If I press "I" (in Dvorak), I don't. (I tested on two browsers to confirm.) Nice font, BTW. I also like the site.
  - jaen 3y ago
    The shortcuts also do not work properly on the most common US QWERTY layout (eg. the "-" key does not). They do work on most EU layouts though, where eg. "-" is placed left of Right Shift (on US QWERTY it is right of "0"), which likely indicates the author made this using some EU keymap... As a guess, this is using deprecated keycodes [1] instead of just characters. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/KeyboardEvent/keyCode https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/KeyboardEve...
cantSpellSober 3y ago
> Customize Commit Mono to your liking before you download Great feature! I wish this would be more common. Thanks for sharing.
vaughan 3y ago
> The slashed '0' is easy to tell apart from 'O' at small sizes Funnily enough, viewing 27" at 140ppi from 1 meter, my brain mistook the slashed '0' for a 6 or 8 when looking at the headings.
azubinski 3y ago
The font and site both are very nice (nostalgic navigation made me smile). Thanks!
rodrigodlu 3y ago
Nice! I love testing new fonts. Using wezterm and alacritty (fedora 38) they look wildly different from JetBrains Mono - specially the width/ line height, but on the website they look similar in width/line height. Anyone knows why? Any tips? Ty!
- BurritoKing 3y ago
  I found setting config.line_height = 1.2 (or 1.3) fixed it up for me, I had the exact same reaction as to you with the line height!
  - timeon 3y ago
    In Alacritty?
TheCleric 3y ago
The horrible contrast ratio on that site doesn't bode well for the accessibility of the typeface.
_dan 3y ago
Typeface is good, but that website is an absolute top tier gem.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
i like the font. it reminds me of andale mono. but the color contrast on the website could do with an adjustment. it's not very good for accessibility.
tempodox 3y ago
Nah, I want my zeros with a middle dot. Slash doesn't cut it.
- throw47474777j 3y ago
  That’s one of the options.
  - tempodox 3y ago
    Nice, I didn't see that before. The text size on mobile is just too tiny.
maxfurman 3y ago
Why is the light mode so dim? I thought something was wrong at first, like there was a modal background covering the screen that I couldn't clear.
cloverich 3y ago
Oh, I know the site design is getting a lot of hate but I think its very cool. I love seeing plays on interfaces like this, would love to hear more about how it was made and what inspired it!
ashton314 3y ago
Alas, missing ℕ ℤ ⊢ λ. If you're missing lambda, you're out for me unfortunately. Maybe a future version will have a wider coverage of Unicode.
- firstlink 3y ago
  [dead]
- lwhsiao 3y ago
  Also missing ⇕, which is annoying if you use a prompt like starship.rs
- enikolajsen 3y ago
  I have filed an issue on GitHub. If you have more characters to add I will look into it, just add a comment on that issue or submit a new one. https://github.com/eigilnikolajsen/commit-mono/issues/9 https://github.com/eigilnikolajsen/commit-mono/issues/9
csomar 3y ago
The contrast is so bad I simply can't look at it. The flickering that happens when you click something is quite annoying and disorientating. It's a shame because this looks like a really nice font that's easy on the eyes.
michaelmior 3y ago
I tried it out, but quickly switched back to my favorite Hack[0]. It may be just that I'm used to it, but I find it easier to read. [0] https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/
- AceyMan 3y ago
  Jetbrains Mono has been my goto since release. The ligatures are nice if you like those in your code views. (Hard to believe no one has mentioned this font yet.)
  - tsuujin 3y ago
    I used Jetbrains Mono right up until I found Intel Mono (https://github.com/intel/intel-one-mono https://github.com/intel/intel-one-mono) and I’ve been using it since.
    - michaelmior 3y ago
      Something about the braces in Intel Mono feel too exaggerated for me.
      - tsuujin 3y ago
        I felt the same until I used it, and now I feel like the braces in other fonts aren’t exaggerated enough.
asciimov 3y ago
I like the glyphs, but the kerning between letters bothers me. For example the gaps between i and t, y and p, or the right side of lowercase o.
sublinear 3y ago
> There are better ways to design than putting a big effort into making something look special. Special is generally less useful than normal, and less rewarding in the long term. Special things demand attention for the wrong reasons, interrupting potentially good atmosphere with their awkward presence. — Jasper Morrison, Super Normal Manifesto What a fantastic quote this site's author chose to illustrate why I might like this font! > To use all features, visit website on desktop. Also on this website though... :(
LeoNatan25 3y ago
Scrolling is completely broken on this website. There is nothing cool about implementing a silly retro navigation style, if you don't either completely disable the modern navigation, or don't fully support both. Here, we have scrollers inside scrollers inside scrollers, oh my.
- LeoNatan25 3y ago
  Update: seems to have been fixed, at least from a quick look at the 02 and 03 pages.
blondin 3y ago
the site is fine on both mobile and desktop. saying this as someone who has real accessibility issues everyday. bookmarked. might give the font a try.
soldeace 3y ago
I really like the typeface, but for some reason it looks "blurred" in comparison to all other mono fonts I have installed. Anyone noticed the same?
javier_e06 3y ago
My font is terminus https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/ https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/ and is because byte dumps are blocky (no round edges) which makes easy to the eye and is somewhat vintage. At least in my experience.
zX41ZdbW 3y ago
Either it does not have hinting, or it looks not nice on a laptop with FullHD screen. I've created a website to compare monospace fonts on something resembling a work environment: https://alexey-milovidov.github.io/font-selector/ https://alexey-milovidov.github.io/font-selector/
kard 3y ago
Good stuff.
shepherdjerred 3y ago
Wow, the website navigation is incredible! I wish more websites were like that.
CrimsonCape 3y ago
How is ligature support? I didn't see anything explicit about ligatures. If you want to compete with some of the other compared fonts, there should be some support for ligatures.

231 points by ecliptik 3y ago

Does anyone know why it looks much better on VSC than WebStorm on Mac? Would love to love IntelliJ products but I can't stand the way they render text.

bongobingo1 3y ago
You might have to enable/disable (subpixel?) anti aliasing?
- pb060 3y ago
  I couldn't find that option, I think they removed it. I improved it by changing the theme, dark themes seem to render a bolder text.
bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
I'd imagine that IntelliJ products use whatever text renderer java has instead of the system renderer.

zhangsen 3y ago

This font is not recognized as a monospaced font by both putty and mintty on my Windows 10, even after a reboot. // sorry for the initial typo of mintty as minty

Zizizizz 3y ago

Very impressive. Currently been using a custom version of Iosevka to mimic Pragmata but this looks - to me at least - an improvement on Fira and Jetbrains.

lwhsiao 3y ago
I'm a huge fan of the compact width of Iosevka. Makes my terminal feel wider.

lifthrasiir 3y ago

> The most effective font is the one you don’t notice. No super high x-height, no geometric construction, no eye-catching design and no confusing ligatures. Designed to be neutral and anonymous, Commit Mono is quietly useful. Thank you for this memorandum, and especially for "no confusing ligatures".

pavlov 3y ago
It’s true, some monospace fonts have absurd ligatures enabled by default. The craziest thing I’ve seen was a single-width “fi” ligature. The only point of this ligature in proportional fonts is to prevent the dot on the ‘i’ from overlapping with the hook of the ‘f’, and that by definition can’t happen in monospace! But you madmen decided to create a single “fi” glyph, like it was a letter of its own. Imagine that on a typewriter.
- thristian 3y ago
  Unicode U+FB01 is the fi ligature as a single precombined codepoint. You're right - it doesn't make any sense to have a monospaced glyph for that ligature, or for fl or ffi or many other codepoints in the Alphabetic Presentation Forms block. But those codepoints exist, and somebody might print them to the terminal, and a terminal has to represent every non-CJK glyph as a single character cell...
  - lifthrasiir 3y ago
    > a terminal has to represent every non-CJK glyph as a single character cell... Not necessarily. Unicode has a dedicated property called East Asian Width [1] which effectively affects the terminal rendering, and "Ambiguous" characters like arrows can be configured as full-width (because CJK users expect that). Even when the configuration itself doesn't exist, the font metric may be used to infer the glyph width in this case. [1] https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr11/ https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr11/
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  IMO, even as someone who really likes ligatures in general, in a monospace font the invariant of 1 character text - 1 character displayed - 1 character width must be upheld. I'm all for => getting turned into a 2 character wide arrow, or === and == getting little dots above them and whatever. But never, under any circumstances, should my font change character alignment. Personally I've been using a lot of Cascadia Code lately. Big fan.

andreicek 3y ago

Love the font, don't care for the website -- it was very hard to navigate.

agos 3y ago
agreed - the contrast is so low that I double checked if my content blocker was removing some cookie modal while leaving an opaque gray backdrop. Then I focused on a different window and then an opaque gray backdrop appeared, for reasons I can't imagine, with a message saying "Click to focus page". Not the best introduction for such an everyday tool
- tommica 3y ago
  I also had to check if my adblocker was blocking something extra - this site is definitely a unique experience when it comes to using and navigating it.

cjs_ac 3y ago

For those who are unsure why 'neutrality' is a desirable quality in a typeface, I refer you to the analogy of the crystal goblet by Beatrice Warde: > Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favourite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain. > Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates fingerprints on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and the fiery hearth of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-pages? Again: The glass is colourless or at the most only faintly tinged in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its colour and is impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted; you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader subconsciously worried by the fear of 'doubling' lines, reading three words as one, and so forth. > Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else. The 'stunt typographer' learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair-spaces. Nobody (save the other craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.

botanical 3y ago

To me this looks almost exactly like Iosevka. Maybe slightly wider and rounder. But it looks good.

ink_13 3y ago
Interesting, it reminded me of Inconsolata

snitty 3y ago

I cannot unzip the download on a Mac…

rifty 3y ago
Had the same issue with built in Archive Utility but I got it to unzip with the app The Unarchiver. The regular font files work but it does say this about all of the Italic font files: >Could not extract "CommitMono-450-Italic.otf" from the "CommitMono.zip" archive: The archive file is incomplete
- adlpz 3y ago
  Same situation, I unzipped it with the built-in `unzip`, but the italics are corrupted. I think the ZIP file is just broken.
  - thex10 3y ago
    Thanks for the `unzip` tip. I find the same result. Maybe a problem with customization around italics?
jamies 3y ago
I found this on their FAQ: "There have been some problems with downloading .zip files from Safari. The download is tested to work in Chrome and FireFox."
- bongobingo1 3y ago
  Truly the Internet Explorer of the modern age. (Perhaps this is Safari passing the download through some more rigorous "malware checker" on macOS that Chrome/Firefox doesn't have access too?)
  - bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
    There is JS that combines the files into a zip before downloading. I'd imagine that it's that code whose behavior differs between browsers.

danpalmer 3y ago

The typeface looks nice, but I first opened the site on mobile and it told me to use keys to navigate, effectively locking me out from browsing it. I then opened it on desktop, tried to scroll and realised that it uses WASD keys which are all over my keyboard. The scroll wheel on my mouse/trackpad/etc don't work. As a user of a non-QWERTY layout this sucks. Then I tried to use the text zoom and while it documents this as being controlled by + and -, it's actually controlled by _ and /. This suggests careless handling of input. Why does this matter? I think a very important thing for typefaces is accessibility and coverage of edge-cases in language and usage. Covering characters that are used in different languages (even just punctuation that isn't common in English), ensuring readability for those without perfect vision, and so on, all require care and attention to a wide range of concerns. This website doesn't instil confidence that the designers of the typeface have taken this approach, and in fact the interaction model (which I actually really like) gives the impression of style over substance.

yboris 3y ago
Minor frustration -- I'm reading the directions to install, but when I focus out (to update my VSCode settings as instructed), the screen goes into low contrast, making it harder to read the directions.
PostOnce 3y ago
I have a normal qwerty layout and opened it on a laptop and my first thought was "why the hell cant i scroll?" It's a stupid website. It took more work to make it shittier to use. It's a loss for the author AND the viewer. Counterproductive. The font seems decent but I closed the tab because I don't have this kind of time.
roda73 3y ago
It's not very nice for mobile views but I do like seeing something new every once in a while.
dvtkrlbs 3y ago
The top seciton names are clickable on mobile
3y ago

holliplex 3y ago

Is this supposed to be so dim in light mode? It looks like it's covered in an invisible modal's backdrop.

cantSpellSober 3y ago
I had a difficult time reading this page, the low contrast reduces legibility. Surprising for a site focused on fine details of type and design.
wrs 3y ago
The font is nice but the site’s contrast is ridiculous. I had to hit F12 and fix the CSS to be able to see anything.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xk_id 3y ago

It’s quiet, unopinionated and calming. It doesn’t draw attention to itself at all. I like it a lot.

karmakaze 3y ago

[To author] There's a typo on the "04 Intelligent" page: "effecient". Actual program listings would make for better examples. Btw, I use a non-Qwerty layout so WASD is nonsense to me.

a1o 3y ago
Hey, do the non-QWERTY have some other default that makes sense to offer as an option to WASD or is it better to have the alternative be it's configurable?
- aoeui-dhtns 3y ago
  I would personally go for configurable. I use the keys that are equivalent to QWERTY’s ESDF keys so that I never have to move my hands from home row for movement in a game. When moving through text I prefer vim keybinds.
  - a1o 3y ago
    Thanks, I will will try to budget time for my little games for configurable keybinds, since they use very few keys I had so far hardcoded WASD but never thought about other keyboard layouts. Thanks for the input!

theSherwood 3y ago

I like the typeface. The website navigation is really fun. A little confusing until you are used to it, but I like the logic of it. Still unclear which widgets can receive input other than navigation. It would be nice to have some clear visual indicator. Some widgets use arrow keys to change state (tabs, toggles, etc.) rather than just move focus around, which I found surprising. Seems like state changes ought to require a distinct input from the focus-affecting input. Some cases certainly blur the lines, such as when navigating over glyphs and seeing captions on focus changes. On the whole, I really enjoyed it. I wish more UIs would experiment with this kind of stuff.

fwlr 3y ago

‘Smart kerning’ is brilliant, and the fact this looks like a more normal Source Code Pro is winning me over as well.

AlanYx 3y ago
I'm really intrigued by the smart kerning idea. Are there any other monospace fonts that do this?
cantSpellSober 3y ago
Is there a term for "smart kerning" this that digital typographers use? Is it a feature of OpenType? Is it similar to/controlled be the font-kerning property in CSS?
- kroltan 3y ago
  > Smart kerning works by looking at single letter between two other letters. If the other letters are in different width classes, the middle letter will slide closer to the narrow letter. From this paragraph it sounds like they're using ligatures, which are rules of "when this character sequence appears, use this glyph instead." But A) I'm no OTF expert, and B) I haven't dissected the font files.
  - __jonas 3y ago
    The font files with smart kerning don't contain any ligatures. It seems they are using glyph substitution tables but I also didn't look in too much detail

Brometheus 3y ago

Commit Mono, hmm? I like it.

ctenb 3y ago

Are there any sample code snippets to view how it looks in an editor? Can't seem to find any

kps 3y ago
The ‘07 Customize’ page has code samples.

eyegor 3y ago

This looks pretty good. Here's another one to check out if you want something thinner (more terminal space). https://mplusfonts.github.io/#mpluscode https://mplusfonts.github.io/#mpluscode

fold3 3y ago
I really like it, it's fresh and friendly. it has a narrow option to have that compact spacing like iosevka which is my favorite. I can't use regular width font anymore after being use to narrow width.
- bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
  Agree, if Commit Mono had a narrow width, it'd replace Iosevka for me in a heartbeat

pc86 3y ago

> Use keyboard to control website No thank you

vehemenz 3y ago

Let's see if this can unseat Comic Code. We are truly living in the golden age of programming typefaces. Ignore the haters. The website is lots of fun.

anon115 3y ago

so sexy and non attention seeking but simple... trying it out. Fira Code is my main.

lagniappe 3y ago

I like the font, and the creativity of the website. Thanks, author, if you're watching!

enikolajsen 3y ago
Thank you so much!

marban 3y ago

I've tried every mono under the sun but I have yet to find one that can hold a candle to PragmataPro Mono Liga.

riwsky 3y ago

Whether or not one personally likes the idiosyncratic navigation, it’s inconsistent with the font’s normcore ethos

enikolajsen 3y ago
You're so right, but if I made the site boring people wouldn't have anything to complain about.
- kard 3y ago
  True.
- erichocean 3y ago
  Just an FYI, some features don't work with Dvorak keyboards. For instance, the "I" key doesn't work (I assume you are using keyCodes, not strings, for characters). That is, it I press "C" (in Dvorak), I get italics on page 2. If I press "I" (in Dvorak), I don't. (I tested on two browsers to confirm.) Nice font, BTW. I also like the site.
- jaen 3y ago
  The shortcuts also do not work properly on the most common US QWERTY layout (eg. the "-" key does not). They do work on most EU layouts though, where eg. "-" is placed left of Right Shift (on US QWERTY it is right of "0"), which likely indicates the author made this using some EU keymap... As a guess, this is using deprecated keycodes [1] instead of just characters. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/KeyboardEvent/keyCode https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/KeyboardEve...

cantSpellSober 3y ago

> Customize Commit Mono to your liking before you download Great feature! I wish this would be more common. Thanks for sharing.

vaughan 3y ago

> The slashed '0' is easy to tell apart from 'O' at small sizes Funnily enough, viewing 27" at 140ppi from 1 meter, my brain mistook the slashed '0' for a 6 or 8 when looking at the headings.

azubinski 3y ago

The font and site both are very nice (nostalgic navigation made me smile). Thanks!

rodrigodlu 3y ago

Nice! I love testing new fonts. Using wezterm and alacritty (fedora 38) they look wildly different from JetBrains Mono - specially the width/ line height, but on the website they look similar in width/line height. Anyone knows why? Any tips? Ty!

BurritoKing 3y ago
I found setting config.line_height = 1.2 (or 1.3) fixed it up for me, I had the exact same reaction as to you with the line height!
- timeon 3y ago
  In Alacritty?

TheCleric 3y ago

The horrible contrast ratio on that site doesn't bode well for the accessibility of the typeface.

_dan 3y ago

Typeface is good, but that website is an absolute top tier gem.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

i like the font. it reminds me of andale mono. but the color contrast on the website could do with an adjustment. it's not very good for accessibility.

tempodox 3y ago

Nah, I want my zeros with a middle dot. Slash doesn't cut it.

throw47474777j 3y ago
That’s one of the options.
- tempodox 3y ago
  Nice, I didn't see that before. The text size on mobile is just too tiny.

maxfurman 3y ago

Why is the light mode so dim? I thought something was wrong at first, like there was a modal background covering the screen that I couldn't clear.

cloverich 3y ago

Oh, I know the site design is getting a lot of hate but I think its very cool. I love seeing plays on interfaces like this, would love to hear more about how it was made and what inspired it!

ashton314 3y ago

Alas, missing ℕ ℤ ⊢ λ. If you're missing lambda, you're out for me unfortunately. Maybe a future version will have a wider coverage of Unicode.

firstlink 3y ago
[dead]
lwhsiao 3y ago
Also missing ⇕, which is annoying if you use a prompt like starship.rs
enikolajsen 3y ago
I have filed an issue on GitHub. If you have more characters to add I will look into it, just add a comment on that issue or submit a new one. https://github.com/eigilnikolajsen/commit-mono/issues/9 https://github.com/eigilnikolajsen/commit-mono/issues/9

csomar 3y ago

The contrast is so bad I simply can't look at it. The flickering that happens when you click something is quite annoying and disorientating. It's a shame because this looks like a really nice font that's easy on the eyes.

michaelmior 3y ago

I tried it out, but quickly switched back to my favorite Hack[0]. It may be just that I'm used to it, but I find it easier to read. [0] https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/

AceyMan 3y ago
Jetbrains Mono has been my goto since release. The ligatures are nice if you like those in your code views. (Hard to believe no one has mentioned this font yet.)
- tsuujin 3y ago
  I used Jetbrains Mono right up until I found Intel Mono (https://github.com/intel/intel-one-mono https://github.com/intel/intel-one-mono) and I’ve been using it since.
  - michaelmior 3y ago
    Something about the braces in Intel Mono feel too exaggerated for me.
    - tsuujin 3y ago
      I felt the same until I used it, and now I feel like the braces in other fonts aren’t exaggerated enough.

asciimov 3y ago

I like the glyphs, but the kerning between letters bothers me. For example the gaps between i and t, y and p, or the right side of lowercase o.

sublinear 3y ago

> There are better ways to design than putting a big effort into making something look special. Special is generally less useful than normal, and less rewarding in the long term. Special things demand attention for the wrong reasons, interrupting potentially good atmosphere with their awkward presence. — Jasper Morrison, Super Normal Manifesto What a fantastic quote this site's author chose to illustrate why I might like this font! > To use all features, visit website on desktop. Also on this website though... :(

LeoNatan25 3y ago

Scrolling is completely broken on this website. There is nothing cool about implementing a silly retro navigation style, if you don't either completely disable the modern navigation, or don't fully support both. Here, we have scrollers inside scrollers inside scrollers, oh my.

LeoNatan25 3y ago
Update: seems to have been fixed, at least from a quick look at the 02 and 03 pages.

blondin 3y ago

the site is fine on both mobile and desktop. saying this as someone who has real accessibility issues everyday. bookmarked. might give the font a try.

soldeace 3y ago

I really like the typeface, but for some reason it looks "blurred" in comparison to all other mono fonts I have installed. Anyone noticed the same?

javier_e06 3y ago

My font is terminus https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/ https://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/ and is because byte dumps are blocky (no round edges) which makes easy to the eye and is somewhat vintage. At least in my experience.

zX41ZdbW 3y ago

Either it does not have hinting, or it looks not nice on a laptop with FullHD screen. I've created a website to compare monospace fonts on something resembling a work environment: https://alexey-milovidov.github.io/font-selector/ https://alexey-milovidov.github.io/font-selector/

kard 3y ago

Good stuff.

shepherdjerred 3y ago

Wow, the website navigation is incredible! I wish more websites were like that.

CrimsonCape 3y ago

How is ligature support? I didn't see anything explicit about ligatures. If you want to compete with some of the other compared fonts, there should be some support for ligatures.