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This is great as it improves glyph/bg contrast when possible (i.e. readability of individual glyphs) and it makes the text's texture look more uniform (hence th

This is great as it improves glyph/bg contrast when possible (i.e. readability of individual glyphs) and it makes the text's texture look more uniform (hence the name). Things people here seem to misunderstand: 1. The grid is not affected. The resp. letters stay within their grid-aligned bounding boxes. 2. Letters may change while you type but this is not noticeable in practice. I have a 3.2x2k 15" screen on my laptop. At my editor's effective font size of around 20px (capital letters, from baseline to top) the change in shape is about a pixel for something like the letter 'm'. Caveat: I'm an ex-typographer. As such I not only do care way more about these things than the average engineer. I'm also more aware that these things do have an effect on eye/brain/visual system strain that is possibly very hard to quantify. But legibility of a text is a thing. And the font with its properties is one very important factor (font width/kerning/line height are equally important in that regard -- nevertheless). Edit: typos

deleted 3y ago
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galaxyLogic 3y ago
I think monospace is good for code. It allows me to write two lines of code perhaps one commented out, and easily see which characters are different in which position. So it's not only readability, but also "comparability".
joveian 3y ago
I've been really enjoying Intel One Mono which seems to solve this by adding more space around most characters (two extra pixels per side at the size I like, about 17px capital letter top to bottom if I counted right) except the m and w (I think, I didn't check everything; they still get one pixel on each side). It also has a low x-height and tall line height and doesn't even try to work at small font sizes but it looks really nice if you make it big enough. Comparing with my previous favorite DejaVu Sans Mono (aka Bitstream Vera Sans Mono) it seems like all the extra space visually evens out the letters and it works well without this kind of adjustment.
deaddodo 3y ago
> 1. The grid is not affected. The resp. letters stay within their grid-aligned bounding boxes. Their own examples literally show that this isn't the case. Just look at the "filming" example, with the "m". In addition, their five fonts showcase shows that letters that "need space" can overbound. I think it's accurate to say that a word respects it's bounding box, but interior glyphs don't necessarily. Unless their own examples are somehow misrepresentative.
- virtualritz 3y ago
  > Their own examples literally show that this isn't the case. Just look at the "filming" example, with the "m". In addition, their five fonts showcase shows that letters that "need space" can overbound. They don't, it's an optical illusion. That's the whole point. Read the whole text and/or open the example images which show the different versions of 'm' and 'i' side by side and measure their bounding boxes. Or open the fonts in a font editor. They have all the same width. Think about the implications if what you said were true. The font (or typeset engine) can't know how many pairs or triplets of these special case letter combos are in a word or a line. So you can't make sure a word stays the same width. It's impossible. There is no 'lookahead' the font designer can use to ensure this. The only option really, to respect the grid, is staying inside equally spaced bounding boxes that are the core property of a monospaced font.
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    > The only option really, to respect the grid, is staying inside equally spaced bounding boxes that are the core property of a monospaced font. ...or just making sure your immediate neighbors and yourself equal their previous total bounding box? "Needs space" glyphs borrow from "gives space" glyphs, but only in the immediate vicinity not in totality. Spaces are neutral characters.

deleted 3y ago

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galaxyLogic 3y ago

I think monospace is good for code. It allows me to write two lines of code perhaps one commented out, and easily see which characters are different in which position. So it's not only readability, but also "comparability".

joveian 3y ago

I've been really enjoying Intel One Mono which seems to solve this by adding more space around most characters (two extra pixels per side at the size I like, about 17px capital letter top to bottom if I counted right) except the m and w (I think, I didn't check everything; they still get one pixel on each side). It also has a low x-height and tall line height and doesn't even try to work at small font sizes but it looks really nice if you make it big enough. Comparing with my previous favorite DejaVu Sans Mono (aka Bitstream Vera Sans Mono) it seems like all the extra space visually evens out the letters and it works well without this kind of adjustment.

deaddodo 3y ago

> 1. The grid is not affected. The resp. letters stay within their grid-aligned bounding boxes. Their own examples literally show that this isn't the case. Just look at the "filming" example, with the "m". In addition, their five fonts showcase shows that letters that "need space" can overbound. I think it's accurate to say that a word respects it's bounding box, but interior glyphs don't necessarily. Unless their own examples are somehow misrepresentative.

virtualritz 3y ago
> Their own examples literally show that this isn't the case. Just look at the "filming" example, with the "m". In addition, their five fonts showcase shows that letters that "need space" can overbound. They don't, it's an optical illusion. That's the whole point. Read the whole text and/or open the example images which show the different versions of 'm' and 'i' side by side and measure their bounding boxes. Or open the fonts in a font editor. They have all the same width. Think about the implications if what you said were true. The font (or typeset engine) can't know how many pairs or triplets of these special case letter combos are in a word or a line. So you can't make sure a word stays the same width. It's impossible. There is no 'lookahead' the font designer can use to ensure this. The only option really, to respect the grid, is staying inside equally spaced bounding boxes that are the core property of a monospaced font.
- deaddodo 3y ago
  > The only option really, to respect the grid, is staying inside equally spaced bounding boxes that are the core property of a monospaced font. ...or just making sure your immediate neighbors and yourself equal their previous total bounding box? "Needs space" glyphs borrow from "gives space" glyphs, but only in the immediate vicinity not in totality. Spaces are neutral characters.