5 ms·

I'm using kitty. I'm surprised it isn't more common, it seems like a nice option. It looks like what we are calling margins here is padding in the kitty confi

I'm using kitty. I'm surprised it isn't more common, it seems like a nice option. It looks like what we are calling margins here is padding in the kitty configuration: https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/conf/#opt-kitty.window_padding_width https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/conf/#opt-kitty.window_paddi... Nesting documents sounds interesting too. It looks like there are already control characters for "file separator", "group separator", "record separator", and "unit separator" that could be used if they were supported (or "start of text" / "end of text" might be a better fit for nesting, though I'm not sure how any of these were historically used). One issue I have with elastic tabstops is that once you go past "every character can be rendered based on the character and position" there are a large number of potentially interesting features and you would need to find something compelling to decide what features to include or exclude (or else you just have one of many possible document formats, which could be ok for an individual programming language but not as "plain text").

kragen 2y ago
thanks! i should have guessed that it would be kitty as for plain text, specifically what i want is plain text that can accommodate proportional fonts and different font sizes without losing the ability to do layout. actually specifying things like fonts, font sizes, colors, padding, margins, borders, corner radii, drop shadows, filters, etc., might be done not at all, with some kind of standoff markup (where the markup is in a different file), with embedded escape sequences, or with syntax-highlighting-like rules ^k and ^l, vt and ff, have an advantage over other possible delimiter characters: they are conventionally considered whitespace, making them legal in between tokens in most existing programming languages with respect to what control characters have historically been used for, i can recommend erica fischer's paper on the history of ascii: https://ia801805.us.archive.org/24/items/enf-ascii/ascii.pdf https://ia801805.us.archive.org/24/items/enf-ascii/ascii.pdf as well as tom jennings's history of character codes
- joveian 2y ago
  Thanks for the references on the historical usage! I have also been starting to think about something a bit similar (but more restricted) on the terminal side, how to adjust terminals to work well with at least proportional fonts (since some languages really need them) and maybe a larger font possibility that uses two lines (I think retaining the fixed size cell as a basic layout feature would be a good idea even if the one cell to one character mapping is removed). Maybe also out of band signaling. Something with much more limitations than the web or GUI (such that the user can configure things once to apply to most everything), although possibly with a full GUI or more complex rendering mode. I hadn't even started to think how it would interact with plain text but I could see some basic positioning/layout stuff being useful in plain text also without causing too much trouble if defined in an easy to render way (as would be best for terminals also). Although the usual issue of how to get there from here would still be a challenge :/.
  - kragen 2y ago
    simple matter of programming ;) all languages except chinese, japanese, and korean really need proportional fonts
    - joveian 2y ago
      :). Try Intel One Mono if you haven't, personally I like it better than proportional fonts for latin characters. https://github.com/intel/intel-one-mono/releases https://github.com/intel/intel-one-mono/releases
      - kragen 2y ago
        Thanks! To me it still doesn't look like an adequate replacement for Times New Roman, Palatino, Bembo, Computer Modern Roman, etc.; it's still a monoline font with no serifs but the occasional slab serif. I know de gustibus non est disputandum, but if you picked up a book in a bookstore and it happened to be printed in Intel One Mono, would you really think, "Oh, what a visual pleasure!" or would you think, "Oh, how unfortunate that 50 years ago they couldn't afford to properly typeset this book and so just xeroxed these typewritten pages!"? I would think the latter.
        joveian 2y ago
        I've enjoyed the occasional old typewritten paper I've come across so maybe that is part of what I like about it :). I much prefer that to many of the issues I see all over the place on the web (like too small line height). I think there is a density vs readability tradeoff and Intel One Mono does well at lower density readable text (at least on screen). Although I think some proportionality can be done without loss of readability and hard to say what I would prefer in print. I've been meaning to try Intel One as my main sans-serif font in the web browser and just changed it (adding it to the top of sans-serif in fontconfig). Looking around a bit I would say the one less than ideal aspect is the word spacing and setting that to -.3ch via stylus to test (unfortunately not a long term solution since it messes up other fonts) makes it look even better (particularly with justified text which gets quite unreasonable with the mono space as the starting point). Maybe I'll try to create a derived "almost mono sans" that just adjusts the space width.

kragen 2y ago

thanks! i should have guessed that it would be kitty as for plain text, specifically what i want is plain text that can accommodate proportional fonts and different font sizes without losing the ability to do layout. actually specifying things like fonts, font sizes, colors, padding, margins, borders, corner radii, drop shadows, filters, etc., might be done not at all, with some kind of standoff markup (where the markup is in a different file), with embedded escape sequences, or with syntax-highlighting-like rules ^k and ^l, vt and ff, have an advantage over other possible delimiter characters: they are conventionally considered whitespace, making them legal in between tokens in most existing programming languages with respect to what control characters have historically been used for, i can recommend erica fischer's paper on the history of ascii: https://ia801805.us.archive.org/24/items/enf-ascii/ascii.pdf https://ia801805.us.archive.org/24/items/enf-ascii/ascii.pdf as well as tom jennings's history of character codes

joveian 2y ago
Thanks for the references on the historical usage! I have also been starting to think about something a bit similar (but more restricted) on the terminal side, how to adjust terminals to work well with at least proportional fonts (since some languages really need them) and maybe a larger font possibility that uses two lines (I think retaining the fixed size cell as a basic layout feature would be a good idea even if the one cell to one character mapping is removed). Maybe also out of band signaling. Something with much more limitations than the web or GUI (such that the user can configure things once to apply to most everything), although possibly with a full GUI or more complex rendering mode. I hadn't even started to think how it would interact with plain text but I could see some basic positioning/layout stuff being useful in plain text also without causing too much trouble if defined in an easy to render way (as would be best for terminals also). Although the usual issue of how to get there from here would still be a challenge :/.
- kragen 2y ago
  simple matter of programming ;) all languages except chinese, japanese, and korean really need proportional fonts
  - joveian 2y ago
    :). Try Intel One Mono if you haven't, personally I like it better than proportional fonts for latin characters. https://github.com/intel/intel-one-mono/releases https://github.com/intel/intel-one-mono/releases
    - kragen 2y ago
      Thanks! To me it still doesn't look like an adequate replacement for Times New Roman, Palatino, Bembo, Computer Modern Roman, etc.; it's still a monoline font with no serifs but the occasional slab serif. I know de gustibus non est disputandum, but if you picked up a book in a bookstore and it happened to be printed in Intel One Mono, would you really think, "Oh, what a visual pleasure!" or would you think, "Oh, how unfortunate that 50 years ago they couldn't afford to properly typeset this book and so just xeroxed these typewritten pages!"? I would think the latter.
      - joveian 2y ago
        I've enjoyed the occasional old typewritten paper I've come across so maybe that is part of what I like about it :). I much prefer that to many of the issues I see all over the place on the web (like too small line height). I think there is a density vs readability tradeoff and Intel One Mono does well at lower density readable text (at least on screen). Although I think some proportionality can be done without loss of readability and hard to say what I would prefer in print. I've been meaning to try Intel One as my main sans-serif font in the web browser and just changed it (adding it to the top of sans-serif in fontconfig). Looking around a bit I would say the one less than ideal aspect is the word spacing and setting that to -.3ch via stylus to test (unfortunately not a long term solution since it messes up other fonts) makes it look even better (particularly with justified text which gets quite unreasonable with the mono space as the starting point). Maybe I'll try to create a derived "almost mono sans" that just adjusts the space width.