3 ms·

Fair points all around (though I disagree with all of them except "+" being exaggerated). DejaVu's characters are a bit too tall for my taste, a clear example o

by osener 13y ago

Fair points all around (though I disagree with all of them except "+" being exaggerated). DejaVu's characters are a bit too tall for my taste, a clear example of this is the oval 'o' character. I also like to have a pronounced difference in the height of lower case and upper case letters. Since we are doing character by character comparison I find "="s of DejaVu too wide (which causes "===" to look bad). It's "<" and ">" are too tight which makes it look bad when used as angle brackets. Backticks are slimmer, lower case "L" looks out of place and (apparently) it doesn't have an italic "*" (I don't know if Akkurat Mono is supposed to have it but it looks nice). I don't get the point you are trying to make about slashed zeros. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashed_zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashed_zero It all boils down to personal preference, thanks for stating yours :). You might also like Liberation Mono, which is my second favorite.

lobster_johnson 13y ago
I guess you pinpointed one reason I like Deja so much: The x height of its lowercase letters is slightly higher than the median line. In other words, the x height is higher than the middle stroke in capital "E" (or "F", "A", etc.). The reason I like this is because code uses mostly lowercase letters (unless you write COBOL), and if you keep the x height classically aligned, the font ends up looking squat and gnarly, like Akkurat. Deja exaggerates the x height by (in display terms, at the point size that I use) two pixels, which evens it out and "fills out" the line height more nicely, making for a more harmonic flow, even though this also means the middle strokes of some capital letters don't line up with the tops of the lowercase letters. (This is not a violation of typography rules, by the way.) Fonts like Akkurat, with classical x heights, look more sparse because lines with only lowercase letters leave more room above the x height, and the difference in height between lower and upper case is more pronounced. Anyway. I agree that Deja's angle brackets are a bit too angled. Akkurat's is better. The problem with Deja's "=" is not the length but the spacing. It has the same spacing issue as Akkurat's "+". However, I categorically reject your criticism of Deja's lower-case "L". It's perfect because it looks precisely like the character L, whereas Akkurat's "l" looks like the number 1. (It's also consistent with the overall shape of the font, matching the arcs in characters such as f and j.) I was jesting about the 0/Ø. I don't care whether there is a center dot or a slash myself. Looked at Liberation, but it's not for me. Too... squished.
- osener 13y ago
  > The problem with Deja's "=" is not the length but the spacing. It has the same spacing issue as Akkurat's "+". Doesn't it become a length problem when we are talking about a fixed-width font though? Thanks for elaborating, you obviously know more about typography than I do! I don't have much reasoning behind my choice of font apart from personal taste. I just took another look at Liberation Mono for the first time in years and it is eerily similar to Akkurat Mono which probably explains why I like both of them so much.
  - lobster_johnson 13y ago
    > Doesn't it become a length problem when we are talking about a fixed-width font though? When drawn on its own with a space before and after, the length itself is not the problem, but of course in a monospace font, character_spacing = (character_width - actual_width_of_glyph), so you are right in that respect. Semantics. :-)

by osener 13y ago

lobster_johnson 13y ago

I guess you pinpointed one reason I like Deja so much: The x height of its lowercase letters is slightly higher than the median line. In other words, the x height is higher than the middle stroke in capital "E" (or "F", "A", etc.). The reason I like this is because code uses mostly lowercase letters (unless you write COBOL), and if you keep the x height classically aligned, the font ends up looking squat and gnarly, like Akkurat. Deja exaggerates the x height by (in display terms, at the point size that I use) two pixels, which evens it out and "fills out" the line height more nicely, making for a more harmonic flow, even though this also means the middle strokes of some capital letters don't line up with the tops of the lowercase letters. (This is not a violation of typography rules, by the way.) Fonts like Akkurat, with classical x heights, look more sparse because lines with only lowercase letters leave more room above the x height, and the difference in height between lower and upper case is more pronounced. Anyway. I agree that Deja's angle brackets are a bit too angled. Akkurat's is better. The problem with Deja's "=" is not the length but the spacing. It has the same spacing issue as Akkurat's "+". However, I categorically reject your criticism of Deja's lower-case "L". It's perfect because it looks precisely like the character L, whereas Akkurat's "l" looks like the number 1. (It's also consistent with the overall shape of the font, matching the arcs in characters such as f and j.) I was jesting about the 0/Ø. I don't care whether there is a center dot or a slash myself. Looked at Liberation, but it's not for me. Too... squished.

osener 13y ago
> The problem with Deja's "=" is not the length but the spacing. It has the same spacing issue as Akkurat's "+". Doesn't it become a length problem when we are talking about a fixed-width font though? Thanks for elaborating, you obviously know more about typography than I do! I don't have much reasoning behind my choice of font apart from personal taste. I just took another look at Liberation Mono for the first time in years and it is eerily similar to Akkurat Mono which probably explains why I like both of them so much.
- lobster_johnson 13y ago
  > Doesn't it become a length problem when we are talking about a fixed-width font though? When drawn on its own with a space before and after, the length itself is not the problem, but of course in a monospace font, character_spacing = (character_width - actual_width_of_glyph), so you are right in that respect. Semantics. :-)