16 ms·

Airbus B612 Cockpit Font

183 points by Bogdanp 1y ago

eastbound 1y ago
B612 is the of the asteroid in The Little Prince from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Seemed strange that they used a name starting with B for an Airbus ;)
egberts1 1y ago
Biggest problem with AirBus font is 1|ilL7 oO0@ ,. The best font for programming is Source Code Pro. https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Source+Code+Pro?preview.text=1%7CiIlL7%2F%20oO0@%20 https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Source+Code+Pro?preview.te...,. Second best is IBM Flex Sans https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans?preview.text=1%7CiIlL7%20oO0@%20 https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans?preview.text...,.
jelder 1y ago
What it actually looks like: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612 https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612
- petercooper 1y ago
  And the mono variant: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612+Mono https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612+Mono
- polishdude20 1y ago
  Funny how it's supposed to be designed to be legible. I read that as "disengage" at first rather than "disregard"
  - octo888 1y ago
    Not just me. Maybe it's how it's displayed on the web. I had an immediate "this is awful" response LOL
    - fmajid 1y ago
      The kerning is not great, for starters
      - atoav 1y ago
        Legible != Readable Legability means you have to be able to differenciate words and letters. With a font specialized for aerospace use that probably also mean it has to retain that quality when printed on panels. A special requirement I would think of is legability while in motion. Try taking your favourite, perfectly kerned font and reading it while shaking your head wildly in poor light conditions, then you get a hint of why this font isn't optimized for looks.
  - Night_Thastus 1y ago
    It may account for the specific displays used in the cockpit, the colors of the font and background, and maybe even interior lighting. IOW it may be more optimal in its real usage.
- ShakataGaNai 1y ago
  Thank you, that's the one thing I'd expect to be a screenshot in a github repo. Regardless, I don't find it particularly legible. The taller aspect ratio with narrow letter gap actually is not super readable to me? Maybe It's "more readable" for plane screen fonts than the other alternatives. It's not fair looking at a font on a 49" highdef ultrawide and saying "This isn't as good".
  - kergonath 1y ago
    > Thank you, that's the one thing I'd expect to be a screenshot in a github repo. Indeed. That’s clearly missing from the readme. > Maybe It's "more readable" for plane screen fonts than the other alternatives. It's not fair looking at a font on a 49" highdef ultrawide and saying "This isn't as good". Yeah. Their benchmark was suboptimal conditions in an aircraft cockpit. I would assume that they tested drastically different lighting conditions and exotic factors (for a font designed for computers) such as motion, vibration, and crew exhaustion.
  - cratermoon 1y ago
    It's very readable at small sizes. Try 8 point. Edit: even better, grab a METAR from your favorite airport and drop it in at 8 point
    - Doxin 1y ago
      That's surprisingly readable for such a tiny size!
    - riedel 1y ago
      I wonder if the main effect is that it is readable for people with begining presbyopia (like me). It seems that this is a problem particularly for pilots and it can be compensated heavily by optimizing visual processing [0]. I at least have the feeling that the small font could be perfect for packaging as it seems to be better readable with my age related farsightedness and could relieve my struggles shopping. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698917302055?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004269891...
- dude250711 1y ago
  Google using anti-Google text specimens is wild: "...No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy,...". Then again, it could have been edited by Gemini.
  - rafram 1y ago
    https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
- oniony 1y ago
  There is actually a sample in the repo: https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/sample.png https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/sample.png.
- asciimo 1y ago
  There is a PDF and a PNG in the docs/ folder (https://github.com/polarsys/b612/tree/master/docs https://github.com/polarsys/b612/tree/master/docs), too.
crabl 1y ago
It's interesting to me that those fonts seem to include ink traps: curious if this has anything to do with the display tech that's used in the cockpit
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nonethewiser 1y ago
  I had not heard of ink traps. Basically, they are characters that try to account for ink bleeding. By putting more negative space in corners, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap But that gives me the impression it would have nothing to do with displays. And makes it a pretty curious choice. Although I personally dont see any ink traps from the font linked in the comments https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612 https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612
  - whalesalad 1y ago
    Set font size slider to 300px and you will notice them. I'd love to see the study that decided this was the right move. For a digital display its just noise and won't even render correctly at small sizes without a high dpi display. I doubt they would do this just for stylistic purposes. Seems like a very odd decision to me.
    - sho_hn 1y ago
      It seems far too deliberate not to be so. Wonder about the reason too. Maybe dual-use with printouts? Edit: I found their reasoning: "Moreover, activity analysis has highlighted possible impairment in reading context: variations of light and viewing angle, high cognitive load for the pilot etc� So, B612 has created a concept of increased legibility of shape for less ideal situations and associated methods of mark corrections, to optimise the final rendering of the text and on-screen reading, particularly with the use of incises and ‘light-traps’ . An incise is a small serif which interrupts the regularity of the vertical line: here it allows to accentuate the clarity of the leading stroke (top part) of the vertical stem 8 to avoid it being rounded off when antialiasing. The principle of ‘ink traps’ has existed as long as typography has: it is a small indentation at the junction of letter strokes which ‘traps’ the ink on small characters, so that it doesn't block the junction and affect the legibility. In the case of B612, the ‘light traps’ accentuate the counterforms 7, particularly for the sharp angles� The indenta- tions are always well distinguished, even at a small size, and the contrast between the different strokes of the character is reinforced." From page 8 of: https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/B612-Leaflet.pdf https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/B612-Leafl... The doc also has a photo of their experimental test environment (unsurprisingly: a cockpit) and info on the test process.
java-man 1y ago
I don't understand why 0 and O look nearly identical.
- teraflop 1y ago
  That's true of lots of fonts. I don't think contexts where you would have to distinguish between those two characters are nearly as common in aviation as they are in programming.
- jeffbee 1y ago
  What would be displayed in an aircraft cockpit where this ambiguity would matter?
- ilc 1y ago
  Aviation use. They won't allow O and 0 to be valid for the same data. So there is no need to disambiguate them.
  - illamint 1y ago
    It's funny, though, there's literally an example of this in the picture located on the ENAC project page for this font in the flight plan screen: https://lii.enac.fr/projects/definition-and-validation-of-an-aeronautical-font/ https://lii.enac.fr/projects/definition-and-validation-of-an... Also seems to be more discussion of this point the last time this was posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37519166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37519166 It also seems like there's a "slashed zero" glyph in the font, though I don't know how to actually type it: https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/sources/ufo/B612Mono-Italic.ufo/glyphs/slashedzero.glif https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/sources/ufo/B61...
    - ilc 1y ago
      The first pic shows the slashed 0, which is what I'd expect if there's any chance of confusion. But in general, aviation is pretty paranoid over this stuff.
    - 1y ago
java-man 1y ago
Sample: https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/sample.png https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/sample.png
- kens 1y ago
  Interestingly, a lot of those characters are not Unicode characters: the aircraft motion, weather pictograms, mail, wifi, phone, the "computer science pictograms" such as start/stop/copy/paste/print/trash, and so forth. Specifically, these use Unicode's private use area at E000. (See B612-Leaflet.pdf page 35.)
uyzstvqs 1y ago
There's also B612 Mono, for use in your text editor or terminal. https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612+Mono https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612+Mono
- sho_hn 1y ago
  Oh, interesting. The proportional font looked pretty terrible to me, but I threw the mono at some C++ and it's actually not unpleasant. Maybe worth a longer trial.
  - 6SixTy 1y ago
    One thing I've noticed with this font though is that the square and round brackets look very close to each other. One of the Monaspace family fonts is very aesthetically similar to B612, but the round bracket is very exaggerated compared to the square bracket.
biohazard2 1y ago
Two articles providing more information about the creation of this font: https://lii.enac.fr/projects/definition-and-validation-of-an-aeronautical-font/ https://lii.enac.fr/projects/definition-and-validation-of-an... https://www.enac.fr/fr/une-police-realisee-par-les-chercheurs-de-lenac-recoit-une-etoile-du-design https://www.enac.fr/fr/une-police-realisee-par-les-chercheur... In particular, a screen of an Airbus screen and a video showing parts of the creation are provided.
- kens 1y ago
  Curiously, the photo of the screen shows slashed zeros, while the font sample shows non-slashed zeros.
  - AlfredDogsbody 1y ago
    I noticed the same thing. It's the first thing I check when someone describes a font as "legible." I want to see O0olI|i diplayed.
  - saltcured 1y ago
    The photo actually shows some slashed and some non-slashed zeros too. Look at the PSI numbers on the left versus the time numbers in the center right. That doesn't seem great from a UX standpoint.
  - bitschubser_ 1y ago
    codepoint E007 is a slashed zero... would be interesting to know why this is not the default
    - bitschubser_ 1y ago
      strangely its not included in the regular font face... only in the italic, bold, bold italic and monospace variant 0123456789
whalesalad 1y ago
Looks like a worse version of Fira Sans
fortran77 1y ago
The cockpit? What is it?
- voxadam 1y ago
  It's the little room in the front of the plane where the pilots sit, but that's not important right now.
_fat_santa 1y ago
I've been using B612 as my main font in Obsidian for years and it's been awesome. Very legible and easy to pickup on a note just with a glance.
croisillon 1y ago
Just in case anyone is wondering about the name: B612 is Saint-Exupery's "Little Prince"'s planet (asteroid). A real-life asteroid has then been named B612, but its number is actually 46610.
- bitwize 1y ago
  46610 decimal = 0xb612 :)
sho_hn 1y ago
This seems as good a thread as any to post this in: If you're fond of aviation aesthetics, I was recently looking for a workshop cart to occupy a 60x40 cm space and couldn't find any, until I realized that (a) standard issue half-size ATLAS airplane galley trolleys are 30x40 cm and (b) they can be bought by regular people and are very price-competitive with professional grade workshop and office furniture. Now I own these and they're amazing: https://mero.ng/i/xnZNqouw.jpg https://mero.ng/i/xnZNqouw.jpg I especially like the little pull-out tables at the top (they're right next to https://eikehein.com/assets/images/makercorner.jpg https://eikehein.com/assets/images/makercorner.jpg). It's also nice to have a constant reminder to stow them in case I take off or land my office.
- kqr 1y ago
  What are their innards like? This looks very useful!
  - sho_hn 1y ago
    Since the inside dimensions and mounting rails are standard, there's lots of different compatible inserts you can get. I cheapened out a bit at that point and went with double-height plastic drawers: https://mero.ng/i/RixswvHW.jpg https://mero.ng/i/RixswvHW.jpg Drawers generally come in single/double and plastic or aviation-grade welded alu. There's also a bunch of funky stuff like cages to keep hot bread in for serving, and an after-market of "galley trolleys as designer furniture" companies that turn them into minibars with wine chillers and bottle storage and what not.
- ghostly_s 1y ago
  To save anyone else the searching: parent's definition of "price-competitive with professional furniture" seems to be $500-$1000 used. I can't find anyone listing a price for new.
  - sho_hn 1y ago
    Yup, mine were 650 EUR a piece new with the drawers shown in the other comment from https://trolley-dolly.de/ https://trolley-dolly.de/ (one of several shops I found), though it looks like they now stopped with trolley+drawers bundles. I was looking at the used market at first, but it turns out that a lot of those are enthusiast collectibles and don't seem to be cheaper than new ones when in good condition, i.e. airline branding bumps the price up, sometimes considerably. It's obviously all >IKEA, but if you compare this to stuff like Lista office drawers or automotive workshop trolleys it's maybe half, and much closer to the pricing of lower-end stuff from a big brand chain toolstore--but with higher build quality, superior rigidity, better wheels and brakes, and being lighter to move around since the application is weight-conscious. Add the subjective neat-ness factor and I think it's worthy of consideration :)
pgorczak 1y ago
While this font looks kind of weird up close, I found it great for creating plots. It’s my default choice in matplotlib rcParams.
amelius 1y ago
How about the flight manuals?
ApolloFortyNine 1y ago
In my opinion, the newer Atkinson Hyperlegible (Next) looks easier to read long term. Maybe B612 is 'better' when you have to read just a few words on a screen, but I've switched to Hyperlegible recently for ebooks and have enjoyed it. [1] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible+Next https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible+Next
xbar 1y ago
Sadly, Airbus' web shop won't sell you any watch that uses it as the typeface. https://airbus-shop.com/en/52-watches https://airbus-shop.com/en/52-watches
FabHK 1y ago
Designed for ease and efficiency of reading and to make letters unambiguous by "maximising the distances between forms to allow for easy, clear identification of each character" [0, p. 7]. Compare FE-Schrift [1], which is designed for number plates to make letters unambiguous in the sense of hard to convert one into another by masking or adding parts: [0] https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/B612-Leaflet.pdf https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/B612-Leafl... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift
bitwize 1y ago
I want to love B612 more than I do, but the ohs and zeroes look identical, which ruins it as a terminal/editor font.
- ComputerGuru 1y ago
  See other comments; a slashed variant is available.
  - bitwize 1y ago
    It looks like the slashed zero is put in the private use area, which doesn't make it particularly useful as a font for Emacs.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
At one time there was a whole promo website for this, https://web.archive.org/web/20200222091737/https://b612-font.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200222091737/https://b612-font... Some previous discussions: 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18946601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18946601 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517567
groos 1y ago
Needs a tweak for programming: () looks like []. Otherwise, I like it.
rsync 1y ago
Does the font change based on what the aircraft is doing? I kid …
- koziserek 1y ago
  пулл уп! пулл уп!
- herewulf 1y ago
  That's actually a rather interesting proposition for any application. Hmm..
BasilPH 1y ago
> Apparently, the link to Intactile DESIGN - intactile[dot]com - in the README file is now redirecting to a gambling site, probably due to Intactile going out of business? https://github.com/polarsys/b612/issues/37 https://github.com/polarsys/b612/issues/37
cge 1y ago
Something I have never been able to find an explanation for with B612: why is the final sigma character (ς) vertically offset downward from every other Greek character? It makes for very jarring text, and there doesn't seem to be any explanation anywhere.
shellwizard 1y ago
It looks similar to Carlito, which is an OFI font similar to MS Calibri
kraussvonespy 1y ago
I put B612 on my kindles a few months ago and it's my favorite reading font. Very legible from tiny to huge, no serifs to slow things down. I'm not sure I'd use it for written documents, although the monospace version is a very welcome replacement for courier.

183 points by Bogdanp 1y ago

B612 is the of the asteroid in The Little Prince from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Seemed strange that they used a name starting with B for an Airbus ;)

egberts1 1y ago

Biggest problem with AirBus font is 1|ilL7 oO0@ ,. The best font for programming is Source Code Pro. https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Source+Code+Pro?preview.text=1%7CiIlL7%2F%20oO0@%20 https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Source+Code+Pro?preview.te...,. Second best is IBM Flex Sans https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans?preview.text=1%7CiIlL7%20oO0@%20 https://fonts.google.com/specimen/IBM+Plex+Sans?preview.text...,.

jelder 1y ago

What it actually looks like: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612 https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612

petercooper 1y ago
And the mono variant: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612+Mono https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612+Mono
polishdude20 1y ago
Funny how it's supposed to be designed to be legible. I read that as "disengage" at first rather than "disregard"
- octo888 1y ago
  Not just me. Maybe it's how it's displayed on the web. I had an immediate "this is awful" response LOL
  - fmajid 1y ago
    The kerning is not great, for starters
    - atoav 1y ago
      Legible != Readable Legability means you have to be able to differenciate words and letters. With a font specialized for aerospace use that probably also mean it has to retain that quality when printed on panels. A special requirement I would think of is legability while in motion. Try taking your favourite, perfectly kerned font and reading it while shaking your head wildly in poor light conditions, then you get a hint of why this font isn't optimized for looks.
- Night_Thastus 1y ago
  It may account for the specific displays used in the cockpit, the colors of the font and background, and maybe even interior lighting. IOW it may be more optimal in its real usage.
ShakataGaNai 1y ago
Thank you, that's the one thing I'd expect to be a screenshot in a github repo. Regardless, I don't find it particularly legible. The taller aspect ratio with narrow letter gap actually is not super readable to me? Maybe It's "more readable" for plane screen fonts than the other alternatives. It's not fair looking at a font on a 49" highdef ultrawide and saying "This isn't as good".
- kergonath 1y ago
  > Thank you, that's the one thing I'd expect to be a screenshot in a github repo. Indeed. That’s clearly missing from the readme. > Maybe It's "more readable" for plane screen fonts than the other alternatives. It's not fair looking at a font on a 49" highdef ultrawide and saying "This isn't as good". Yeah. Their benchmark was suboptimal conditions in an aircraft cockpit. I would assume that they tested drastically different lighting conditions and exotic factors (for a font designed for computers) such as motion, vibration, and crew exhaustion.
- cratermoon 1y ago
  It's very readable at small sizes. Try 8 point. Edit: even better, grab a METAR from your favorite airport and drop it in at 8 point
  - Doxin 1y ago
    That's surprisingly readable for such a tiny size!
  - riedel 1y ago
    I wonder if the main effect is that it is readable for people with begining presbyopia (like me). It seems that this is a problem particularly for pilots and it can be compensated heavily by optimizing visual processing [0]. I at least have the feeling that the small font could be perfect for packaging as it seems to be better readable with my age related farsightedness and could relieve my struggles shopping. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698917302055?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004269891...
dude250711 1y ago
Google using anti-Google text specimens is wild: "...No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy,...". Then again, it could have been edited by Gemini.
- rafram 1y ago
  https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
oniony 1y ago
There is actually a sample in the repo: https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/sample.png https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/sample.png.
asciimo 1y ago
There is a PDF and a PNG in the docs/ folder (https://github.com/polarsys/b612/tree/master/docs https://github.com/polarsys/b612/tree/master/docs), too.

crabl 1y ago

It's interesting to me that those fonts seem to include ink traps: curious if this has anything to do with the display tech that's used in the cockpit

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nonethewiser 1y ago
I had not heard of ink traps. Basically, they are characters that try to account for ink bleeding. By putting more negative space in corners, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap But that gives me the impression it would have nothing to do with displays. And makes it a pretty curious choice. Although I personally dont see any ink traps from the font linked in the comments https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612 https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612
- whalesalad 1y ago
  Set font size slider to 300px and you will notice them. I'd love to see the study that decided this was the right move. For a digital display its just noise and won't even render correctly at small sizes without a high dpi display. I doubt they would do this just for stylistic purposes. Seems like a very odd decision to me.
  - sho_hn 1y ago
    It seems far too deliberate not to be so. Wonder about the reason too. Maybe dual-use with printouts? Edit: I found their reasoning: "Moreover, activity analysis has highlighted possible impairment in reading context: variations of light and viewing angle, high cognitive load for the pilot etc� So, B612 has created a concept of increased legibility of shape for less ideal situations and associated methods of mark corrections, to optimise the final rendering of the text and on-screen reading, particularly with the use of incises and ‘light-traps’ . An incise is a small serif which interrupts the regularity of the vertical line: here it allows to accentuate the clarity of the leading stroke (top part) of the vertical stem 8 to avoid it being rounded off when antialiasing. The principle of ‘ink traps’ has existed as long as typography has: it is a small indentation at the junction of letter strokes which ‘traps’ the ink on small characters, so that it doesn't block the junction and affect the legibility. In the case of B612, the ‘light traps’ accentuate the counterforms 7, particularly for the sharp angles� The indenta- tions are always well distinguished, even at a small size, and the contrast between the different strokes of the character is reinforced." From page 8 of: https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/B612-Leaflet.pdf https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/B612-Leafl... The doc also has a photo of their experimental test environment (unsurprisingly: a cockpit) and info on the test process.

java-man 1y ago

I don't understand why 0 and O look nearly identical.

teraflop 1y ago
That's true of lots of fonts. I don't think contexts where you would have to distinguish between those two characters are nearly as common in aviation as they are in programming.
jeffbee 1y ago
What would be displayed in an aircraft cockpit where this ambiguity would matter?
ilc 1y ago
Aviation use. They won't allow O and 0 to be valid for the same data. So there is no need to disambiguate them.
- illamint 1y ago
  It's funny, though, there's literally an example of this in the picture located on the ENAC project page for this font in the flight plan screen: https://lii.enac.fr/projects/definition-and-validation-of-an-aeronautical-font/ https://lii.enac.fr/projects/definition-and-validation-of-an... Also seems to be more discussion of this point the last time this was posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37519166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37519166 It also seems like there's a "slashed zero" glyph in the font, though I don't know how to actually type it: https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/sources/ufo/B612Mono-Italic.ufo/glyphs/slashedzero.glif https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/sources/ufo/B61...
  - ilc 1y ago
    The first pic shows the slashed 0, which is what I'd expect if there's any chance of confusion. But in general, aviation is pretty paranoid over this stuff.
  - 1y ago

java-man 1y ago

Sample: https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/sample.png https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/sample.png

kens 1y ago
Interestingly, a lot of those characters are not Unicode characters: the aircraft motion, weather pictograms, mail, wifi, phone, the "computer science pictograms" such as start/stop/copy/paste/print/trash, and so forth. Specifically, these use Unicode's private use area at E000. (See B612-Leaflet.pdf page 35.)

uyzstvqs 1y ago

There's also B612 Mono, for use in your text editor or terminal. https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612+Mono https://fonts.google.com/specimen/B612+Mono

sho_hn 1y ago
Oh, interesting. The proportional font looked pretty terrible to me, but I threw the mono at some C++ and it's actually not unpleasant. Maybe worth a longer trial.
- 6SixTy 1y ago
  One thing I've noticed with this font though is that the square and round brackets look very close to each other. One of the Monaspace family fonts is very aesthetically similar to B612, but the round bracket is very exaggerated compared to the square bracket.

biohazard2 1y ago

Two articles providing more information about the creation of this font: https://lii.enac.fr/projects/definition-and-validation-of-an-aeronautical-font/ https://lii.enac.fr/projects/definition-and-validation-of-an... https://www.enac.fr/fr/une-police-realisee-par-les-chercheurs-de-lenac-recoit-une-etoile-du-design https://www.enac.fr/fr/une-police-realisee-par-les-chercheur... In particular, a screen of an Airbus screen and a video showing parts of the creation are provided.

kens 1y ago
Curiously, the photo of the screen shows slashed zeros, while the font sample shows non-slashed zeros.
- AlfredDogsbody 1y ago
  I noticed the same thing. It's the first thing I check when someone describes a font as "legible." I want to see O0olI|i diplayed.
- saltcured 1y ago
  The photo actually shows some slashed and some non-slashed zeros too. Look at the PSI numbers on the left versus the time numbers in the center right. That doesn't seem great from a UX standpoint.
- bitschubser_ 1y ago
  codepoint E007 is a slashed zero... would be interesting to know why this is not the default
  - bitschubser_ 1y ago
    strangely its not included in the regular font face... only in the italic, bold, bold italic and monospace variant 0123456789

whalesalad 1y ago

Looks like a worse version of Fira Sans

fortran77 1y ago

The cockpit? What is it?

voxadam 1y ago
It's the little room in the front of the plane where the pilots sit, but that's not important right now.

_fat_santa 1y ago

I've been using B612 as my main font in Obsidian for years and it's been awesome. Very legible and easy to pickup on a note just with a glance.

croisillon 1y ago

Just in case anyone is wondering about the name: B612 is Saint-Exupery's "Little Prince"'s planet (asteroid). A real-life asteroid has then been named B612, but its number is actually 46610.

bitwize 1y ago
46610 decimal = 0xb612 :)

sho_hn 1y ago

This seems as good a thread as any to post this in: If you're fond of aviation aesthetics, I was recently looking for a workshop cart to occupy a 60x40 cm space and couldn't find any, until I realized that (a) standard issue half-size ATLAS airplane galley trolleys are 30x40 cm and (b) they can be bought by regular people and are very price-competitive with professional grade workshop and office furniture. Now I own these and they're amazing: https://mero.ng/i/xnZNqouw.jpg https://mero.ng/i/xnZNqouw.jpg I especially like the little pull-out tables at the top (they're right next to https://eikehein.com/assets/images/makercorner.jpg https://eikehein.com/assets/images/makercorner.jpg). It's also nice to have a constant reminder to stow them in case I take off or land my office.

kqr 1y ago
What are their innards like? This looks very useful!
- sho_hn 1y ago
  Since the inside dimensions and mounting rails are standard, there's lots of different compatible inserts you can get. I cheapened out a bit at that point and went with double-height plastic drawers: https://mero.ng/i/RixswvHW.jpg https://mero.ng/i/RixswvHW.jpg Drawers generally come in single/double and plastic or aviation-grade welded alu. There's also a bunch of funky stuff like cages to keep hot bread in for serving, and an after-market of "galley trolleys as designer furniture" companies that turn them into minibars with wine chillers and bottle storage and what not.
ghostly_s 1y ago
To save anyone else the searching: parent's definition of "price-competitive with professional furniture" seems to be $500-$1000 used. I can't find anyone listing a price for new.
- sho_hn 1y ago
  Yup, mine were 650 EUR a piece new with the drawers shown in the other comment from https://trolley-dolly.de/ https://trolley-dolly.de/ (one of several shops I found), though it looks like they now stopped with trolley+drawers bundles. I was looking at the used market at first, but it turns out that a lot of those are enthusiast collectibles and don't seem to be cheaper than new ones when in good condition, i.e. airline branding bumps the price up, sometimes considerably. It's obviously all >IKEA, but if you compare this to stuff like Lista office drawers or automotive workshop trolleys it's maybe half, and much closer to the pricing of lower-end stuff from a big brand chain toolstore--but with higher build quality, superior rigidity, better wheels and brakes, and being lighter to move around since the application is weight-conscious. Add the subjective neat-ness factor and I think it's worthy of consideration :)

pgorczak 1y ago

While this font looks kind of weird up close, I found it great for creating plots. It’s my default choice in matplotlib rcParams.

amelius 1y ago

How about the flight manuals?

ApolloFortyNine 1y ago

In my opinion, the newer Atkinson Hyperlegible (Next) looks easier to read long term. Maybe B612 is 'better' when you have to read just a few words on a screen, but I've switched to Hyperlegible recently for ebooks and have enjoyed it. [1] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible+Next https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible+Next

xbar 1y ago

Sadly, Airbus' web shop won't sell you any watch that uses it as the typeface. https://airbus-shop.com/en/52-watches https://airbus-shop.com/en/52-watches

FabHK 1y ago

Designed for ease and efficiency of reading and to make letters unambiguous by "maximising the distances between forms to allow for easy, clear identification of each character" [0, p. 7]. Compare FE-Schrift [1], which is designed for number plates to make letters unambiguous in the sense of hard to convert one into another by masking or adding parts: [0] https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/B612-Leaflet.pdf https://github.com/polarsys/b612/blob/master/docs/B612-Leafl... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FE-Schrift

bitwize 1y ago

I want to love B612 more than I do, but the ohs and zeroes look identical, which ruins it as a terminal/editor font.

ComputerGuru 1y ago
See other comments; a slashed variant is available.
- bitwize 1y ago
  It looks like the slashed zero is put in the private use area, which doesn't make it particularly useful as a font for Emacs.

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

At one time there was a whole promo website for this, https://web.archive.org/web/20200222091737/https://b612-font.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200222091737/https://b612-font... Some previous discussions: 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18946601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18946601 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517567

groos 1y ago

Needs a tweak for programming: () looks like []. Otherwise, I like it.

rsync 1y ago

Does the font change based on what the aircraft is doing? I kid …

koziserek 1y ago
пулл уп! пулл уп!
herewulf 1y ago
That's actually a rather interesting proposition for any application. Hmm..

BasilPH 1y ago

> Apparently, the link to Intactile DESIGN - intactile[dot]com - in the README file is now redirecting to a gambling site, probably due to Intactile going out of business? https://github.com/polarsys/b612/issues/37 https://github.com/polarsys/b612/issues/37

cge 1y ago

Something I have never been able to find an explanation for with B612: why is the final sigma character (ς) vertically offset downward from every other Greek character? It makes for very jarring text, and there doesn't seem to be any explanation anywhere.

shellwizard 1y ago

It looks similar to Carlito, which is an OFI font similar to MS Calibri

kraussvonespy 1y ago

I put B612 on my kindles a few months ago and it's my favorite reading font. Very legible from tiny to huge, no serifs to slow things down. I'm not sure I'd use it for written documents, although the monospace version is a very welcome replacement for courier.