Re: TrueType fonts for xvile

[Paul Fox]

brendan wrote:
 >    As far as fonts go, I use Hack (Debian package fonts-hack) for
 >    programming. 
 
Welp.  There's a day I'll never get back!  I can't believe you made me
look closely at the fonts I've been using.  Sheesh.  :-)

I'd been using Monospace Regular for a long time, but because I'd
chosen a Liberation font for something else on my desktop, I switched
to Liberation Mono for my terminals, thinking they'd all look nice
together.  But after a few days, I decided something was wrong with
it (it turns out the font is squashed vertically for some reason), and
I remembered this mail thread, and went and installed the Hack font.
I agree -- it's a nice font.  I also found Fira Mono -- that's nice
too.  And while comparing, I realized that there were things that were
really ugly about my old familiar Monospace Regular.  So I couldn't go
back.  (The centerline of the hyphen and > and < symbols don't line
up, so C pointers look really dumb!  The horror!!  :-)

But both Hack and Fira also made some odd choices for a couple of
characters each.  The Hack percent sign (%) is horrible looking, and
the 0 digit has this weird dark ellipse down the middle.  OTOH, Fira
gets those right, but the @ sign is truly weird, the lowercase 'g' is
odd, and the "Regular" version is inexplicably wider than all the
others in the family.

So I just spent a bunch of not-so-quality time with fontforge,
indulging what might be my mild OCD. :-)  I fixed the 0 and the % to
my satisfaction, and for now, I'm a happy camper.

So thank you.  I think!

paul
"Ooh!  Maybe I should adjust the tail on that comma!"  

=----------------------
paul fox, pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 42.7 degrees)