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Server Mono: A Typeface Inspired by Typewriters, Apple's SF Mono, and CLIs
- IshKebab 2y agoLine spacing is way too tight.
- luluthefirst 2y agoIt makes their paragraphs hard to read regardless of the font.
- malodyets 2y agoMuch good there but l and 1 are identical.
- mroche 2y agoI'm really surprised this made it through, it's one of the handful of character sets that require distinct glyphs to prevent confusion/mixups.
- vmladenov 2y agoNot quite, the 1's top serif extends to the left edge. https://postimg.cc/nXMt2qhx https://postimg.cc/nXMt2qhx Still way too close for comfort.
- queuebert 2y agoTo be fair, they did say it was inspired by typewriters, and most old typewriters don't have a '1', so you type a lowercase 'l' instead.
- irundebian 2y agoThat are really old typewriters.
- fsckboy 2y agonot really, in the sense that it would be a really old typewriter, there aren't any new typewriters. I'm not super old, and typewriters I used in high school did not have a one. Nobody had an IBM Selectric at home. BTW on the same subject of fonts, you want to be able to distinguish between 1, l, and I which are not always distinguishable.
- irundebian 2y agoI just googled for some typewriter pictures and only really old typewriters didn't have a "1".
- pwg 2y agoActually, it was /most/ typewriters. Having a numeral one (1) key on a keyboard was something brought about by computer input keyboards (where there did, indeed, need to be a distinct numeral one separate from lower case-ell (l)). But for most typewriters, the ell (l) key also served as the numeral one key.
- amelius 2y agoThen don't call it "server". Call it "typewriter".
- rjmorris 2y agoHow did they type '2' on those old typewriters?
- hoppyhoppy2 2y agoThere was a "2" key, just no "1" key on some models.
- TacticalCoder 2y agoYeah it's annoying in several fonts, not just that one. So I simply modify the font I'm using: one thing I do is I remove the lower left horizontal bar from lowercase 'l', that way it cannot be mistaken from a '1'. Basically changing what's on the left to what's on the right: *** *** * * * * * * ***** *** It's a little trick I've been using since so long I don't even remember since when I'm doing that.
- ezekg 2y agoLove the zero, but agreed.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoI use proportional fonts for coding that don’t really distinguish between 1 and l, it doesn’t seem to matter in practice.
- m463 2y agoyeah ibm's courier has a horizontal top line for 'l' and a slanted top line for '1'
- ddtaylor 2y ago> and the Internet Development Studio Company community This reads very PR-ish and lame.
- oguz-ismail 2y agoLowercase f and r are ugly.
- hahamaster 2y agoEspecially “r”, horrible.
- java-man 2y agoAs an alternative, I would suggest to consider Iosevka [0]. I am using it in the browser and for coding. [0] https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka
- lycos 2y agoI can't put my finger on it but I don't find this enjoyable to read at all.. so I don't know much about readability claims here. Maybe I'm an outlier.
- copperroof 2y agoI know nothing whatsoever about readability but this almost makes me ill to read. Very unsettling.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoType writer fonts are hard to read in general. Kerning leads to readability in general.
- ecjhdnc2025 2y agoThe line spacing is way too tight (this is line-spacing: 1). Obviously that is beneficial for ASCII-art (smaller vertical gaps), but plain text would benefit from at least 1.1 and maybe 1.2. I am not a typographer but the cap height of this font (I think it's the cap height) appears quite large, when perhaps it would be better to have a slightly smaller cap height so the ASCII-art features would work well at line-height 1.0 without the letters feeling so vertically cramped. Basically, slightly less-tall letters. But as I say, not an expert.
- fsckboy 2y agoline spacing beyond minimal ought not be an attribute of a font. I can see a "recommended" line spacing for some type of "vertical as well as horizontal beauty", but drives me nuts when choosing a font also chooses scads of whitespace. I like to squeeze a lot of info on a page, why do other people get to say "no". Sure, space out your wedding invitation, I can deal, but on the daily text on my screen, that should be up to me. I do prefer "typewriter" fonts that are more squoze horizontally, this one seems to have loosened the ol belt a little, maybe for more "squareness".
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
- deathanatos 2y agoSo, if you're going to demonstrate the box drawing characters — and in a monospaced font, I would — they should line up? E.g., under "lines", the rows are overlapping; https://i.imgur.com/KnOP2Wu.png https://i.imgur.com/KnOP2Wu.png ; I would think they're only supposed to just touch, with no gap, no overlap. The boxes, similarly, don't quite line up right. https://i.imgur.com/6pVYh9a.png https://i.imgur.com/6pVYh9a.png (Even the 100% box isn't lining up right, although somehow what FF screenshotted != what it rendered. sigh.) The point being, you want these to tile seamlessly. Oddly, they tile differently in the pictures-of-font that break up the page. (Which I'm not sure what they're supposed to be? One is called "5af1d7a5-fa60-4827-9b4f-808cdb635d59" and has no alt text. They remind me of Dwarf Fortress though.) As other people hint, this seems like the line height is cramped. I/l/1 ambiguities is a deal breaker for any terminal font, though.
- LoganDark 2y agoThey do line up, if you install and use the OTF version: https://imgur.com/a/N2tNaiO https://imgur.com/a/N2tNaiO although some characters still seem to be missing, most of them work as intended. edit: nevermind, looks like it was using Lucida Sans instead! what is going on? does the OTF only include ASCII or something?
- worewood 2y agoNumber One, Pipe Character, lower case L, upper case I, zero and O, Parentheses and Brackets, are so common pain points on coding and terminal fonts. Those should be painfully distinct.
- DidYaWipe 2y agoThe first thing I look at on ANY font is the capital "i." No crossbars? No dice. This one has those and a distinguishable zero vs. O, so far so good. Whoops; someone pointed out that 1 and l are indistinguishable. That's a major failing.
- PontifexMinimus 2y ago
- riiii 2y agoMoaning about my personal preference, it's not for me. I find the letter shapes inconsistent and line spacing is too narrow. My eyes hurt after reading a few lines. But hey, well done on getting it out the door!
- replete 2y agoline-height: 28px !important It's not very readable with line-height set to the x-height, ironically. Cool font though. Find some old demoscene / warez ansi headers and show it put some on the homepage perhaps?
- vincent-manis 2y agoI'm also not enthralled with this. Mind you, I really like Cascadia Code, which in its 2024 iteration includes NerdFonts characters. Finally, something done by Microsoft that I can recommend unreservedly!
- Uehreka 2y agoNot sure what the images on this page are supposed to be, they don’t load in iOS Safari. Also I’m not seeing the 1/I/l confusion other people are talking about, so it’s possible the font isn’t rendering in Safari either and it’s falling back to the default monospace font.
- beala 2y agoHere's how it looks on safari mobile for me. The lowercase l and 1 are exactly the same. https://imgur.com/a/I2r2ZQ6 https://imgur.com/a/I2r2ZQ6
- eddyg 2y agoI’ll just mention Berkeley Graphics and the excellent Berkeley Mono. https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/ https://berkeleygraphics.com/typefaces/berkeley-mono/
- GlacierFox 2y ago$75? Haha Holy s...
- eddyg 2y agoI also highly recommend PragmataPro⁽¹⁾ if you prefer more characters per line. It’s €199 for the complete typeface, but well worth it for something you interact with for many hours per day, every day. More than 9000 characters have been hand-optimized from 9pt to 48pt to guarantee the best possible readability. (You can start off with the “Essentials” variant for only €19, which is definitely a bargain!) ⁽¹⁾ https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/ https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/
- grose 2y agoGoes on sale every year during Black Friday. 100% worth it even without the discount. Love Berkley Mono too. Iosevka (https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ https://typeof.net/Iosevka/) is a good free alternative that I like to use for online IDEs/REPLs and such. (Berkley Mono's contract forbids this kind of usage, which I understand, but I wish I could use it more!)
- bowsamic 2y agoFonts are gear acquisition syndrome for software developers
- jen729w 2y agoI presume you’re indicating what an outstanding bargain this is? For something you look at the entire day? Every day? Seventy five bucks, once? I have the full licence as I use this typeface professionally. It’s the best money I’ve ever spent.
- 2y ago
- usefulcat 2y agoTangential, but I quite like this quote: “Just as the scientist must think and experiment alternately, so the artist, the author and the scholar must alternate creation or study with participation in the life around them.”
- fernly 2y agoFor those commenting on the importance of character ambiguity, I completely agree, and offer "DP Sans Mono", a font specifically designed for unambiguous proofreading. https://www.pgdp.net/wiki/DP_Sans_Mono https://www.pgdp.net/wiki/DP_Sans_Mono https://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/font_sample.php https://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/font_sample.php font download link at https://www.pgdp.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=70714 https://www.pgdp.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=70714
- pwg 2y agoGiven the emphasis on being unambigious, it is interesting that the capital-eye (I) and lower case-ell (l) are the identical glyph in DP Sans Mono.
- adiM 2y agoThey are significantly different!
- pwg 2y agoHere is what their own "Font Sample" page [1] shows me: https://0x0.st/XWE_.png https://0x0.st/XWE_.png This is magnified 2x (to show the similarity). Both the sample alphabet and the "character differences" shows uppercase-eye and lowercase-ell as the identical glyph, for DPSansMono. [1] https://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/font_sample.php https://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/font_sample.php
- ummonk 2y agoSomething is wrong with your browser. Here is what the font sample page actually looks like: https://pikwy.com/web/66ba462a0f6f4a66106b0a6a https://pikwy.com/web/66ba462a0f6f4a66106b0a6a
- ghostly_s 2y agoA single weight font doesn't really meet the needs of modern CLI environments does it? And I don't get what the ASCII art have to do with anything. What does it depict? Screenshots from some scifi movie? And finally oh god, l and 1 are literally the same.
- jmprspret 2y agoWait what? Do you seriously need bold fonts in your terminal? I find them annoying. I would much prefer a single weight.
- nutrie 2y agoIt may not be just that. I sometimes end up using the light weight to improve readability, especially on light background, plus in some cases regular is more like semi-bold.
- YarickR2 2y agoPerfect line spacing, other fonts have it way too wide between lines, screen feels half-empty. Great font, switching to it . Medium weight would be lovely, though
- byte_0 2y agoI am not sure if I like the font or not, but I do like the corpus of text used to demonstrate the character rendering. At first glance, I thought it was Quenya or Sindarin, but I am not too sure.
- andyferris 2y agoNitpick: the acknowledgements make a cute usage of "thy" and "thou hast". However, they actually refer to multiple individuals, and need to use "your" and "you have". Boring, and wrecks the aesthetic, I know...
- __mharrison__ 2y agoInteresting choices for 1 and l...
- voidUpdate 2y agoPersonally, for a monospaced font, I prefer Jetbrains Mono. It's free and looks nice to me
- y_fucimo 2y agoIt might be better to create a website with a light theme, especially for a typeface inspired by typewriters. I just can't read it.
- throwaway81523 2y agoWhy do we need another font like this? It looks ugly anyway, plus has the other problems people mentioned about character distinguishability.
- h4ch1 2y agoafter trying a myriad of "programming" fonts, nothing feels more comfortable than Pragmasevka [0], a mix of PragmataPro and Iosevka. [0] https://github.com/shytikov/pragmasevka https://github.com/shytikov/pragmasevka
- AnthonBerg 2y agoAfter reading through the thread, I want to show my warm and honest appreciation for Server Mono. I like the art! I like the feel and… idk, visual rhythm? One man’s inconsistent is another man’s lively. I like the tight linespacing; Am of the opinion that line art glyphs should touch each other across lines – of course! – but it can’t be solved at the font level. We need console-oriented text rendering that knows how to connect those glyps. Could be done automatically but seems awkward. Could be done even better with, say, some kind of anchor points embedded into the font file – in a particular UNICODE location maybe? And I for one don’t really mind I and l and 1 looking similar. Distinct is better but I am fond of the historic imperfection. O and 0 absolutely need to be distinguishable though! haha
- morning-coffee 2y agoHow far back from the monitor should I be to be able to interpret what the ASCII art blocks are showing? Seems like maybe they were inspired by those 90's "Magic Eye" pictures.
- paulcarroty 2y agoGreat SF improvements, waiting for Nerd Fonts version :)
- lelanthran 2y agoThat image at the top looks like petsci art.
- cormullion 2y agoFont seems to not include the '<', '>', or '=' characters. I sympathize with font designers, there are so many glyphs you have to stare at - hundred if not thousands - for days and weeks on end; eventually you get tired of seeing them...
- drewhk 2y agoWell, instead of complaining here about 1 and l, I just filed a ticket on their GH repo and it already got resolved... https://github.com/internet-development/www-server-mono/issues/3 https://github.com/internet-development/www-server-mono/issu...
- fouc 2y agoI just saw it was updated. Great news! > Added missing symbols + - = > Changed the top of 1 to distinguish from letters. https://github.com/internet-development/www-server-mono/releases/tag/Releases https://github.com/internet-development/www-server-mono/rele...
- mercacona 2y agoI liked the 1=l because I thought it was intentional. This quick “fix” unsettles me.
- inglor_cz 2y agoJust a comment from behind the former Iron Curtain, I am really happy that you included letters with diacritics. When it comes to ÁĚÝŘŠ etc., the Iron Curtain still sometimes rears its head from the screen, even in 2024.