Hacker News Reader

Comment by zeamaize | Hacker News Reader

> I chose the lozenge as the command character because a) it appears in almost every font, b) it’s barely used in ordinary typesetting, c) it’s not used in any programming language that I know of, and d) its shape and color allow it to stand out easily in code without being distracting.

> If you’re using DrRacket, you can use the Insert Command Char button at the top of the editing window to — you guessed it — insert the command character.

> If you’re using a different editor, here’s how you type it:

> Mac: Option + Shift + V > Windows: holding down Alt, type 9674 on the num pad > GNU/Linux, BSD: Type Ctrl + Shift + U, then 25CA, then Enter

> For more information on entering arbitrary Unicode glyphs, see Wikipedia.

Jesus Christ that's a terrible design.

View on HN

He also advocate not using underline to denote links. In his practical typography book he practically hides all hyperlinks.

I also find his redesigns of documentation pages uninviting to read.

I find Butterick to be a passionate, opinionated, hard working, but ultimately a poor designer.

I agree. His book Practical Typography is very hard on the eyes, even looking at the text is uncomfortable. I think he fell into a trap of overdoing things. Like some people when they learn about what you can do with javascript and css add all sorts of annoying visual effects with no unified theme to the whole. They just enter some sort of trance and keep adding.

    > He also advocate not using underline to denote links.
    >In his practical typography book he practically hides all hyperlinks.

I think that's a fine, defensible stylistic choice. When reading a paragraph of prose, I find it INTERRUPTS MY FLOW if there is a jarring style change in the middle of a sentence, as in this one.

The visual style of a hyperlink is only relevant to the point that you know the hyperlink is there and can find it when you want to click on it. Most of the time, that's not a goal, so you want it to fade into the background unless the user has indicated that is their goal.

So my preferred style for hyperlinks in prose is a color that's right at the just-noticeable difference [1] relative the normal text. When you mouse over the paragraph, which indicates you are intending to click, the contrast increases.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-noticeable_difference

> When you mouse over the paragraph, which indicates you are intending to click, the contrast increases.

What would you suggest in the case of touchscreens? Increased contrast while scrolling with a slow fade-out afterwards?

Ooh, that's a great question. I haven't thought about that (though I do generally try to make my designs responsive and mobile-friendly). I like your idea of a slow fade after scroll.

> I like your idea of a slow fade after scroll.

Things blinking/fading/shifting/changing when I'm taking completely unrelated actions (or, worse, all on their own) is one of the most unreadable/unusable design decisions I regularly face. It's a good way to get me to close a tab, regardless of any other factors.

> hyperlinks in prose is a color that's right at the just-noticeable difference

The problem with trying to achieve JND for online publishing formats is that you have to account for variable monitor settings and lighting conditions. What stands out on my monitors at home might be barely noticeable on the crap displays at the office or my laptop under some lighting conditions or when I have it set to low power.

On top of technological differences, you also need to contend with variances in people's eye-sight.

Underlining is far simpler and more reliable. Perhaps highlighting with an underline as the link is drawn or scrolls into view, and fading the underline out soon after, to be drawn again if the pointer hovers over the paragraph or the page scrolls, would work?

GNU/Linux, (freebsd?) with https://fcitx-im.org : Type Ctrl+Shift+Alt+U, Begin typing "lozenge", select the character with Alt-2 after "loz". ◊

Same for "black lozenge" ⧫, "rightwards two-headed triple dash arrow" ⤐, "islamic ligature bismillah ar-rahman ar-raheem" ﷽.

Unicode input can be easy if you have an input method with fuzzy search and aliases (e.g. "up tack" ⊥ shows up when you search for "bottom")

It's perfectly fine if and only if you're on a Mac. It gets bad on every other platform.

If you actually need to use this seriously there are ways of customizing keyboard layouts and text input on every platform and every reasonable text editor.

You can also change the lozenge operator to a different character. Its just convenient to pick one you won't ever have to escape

That is until you find an obscure enough example that uses it.

I've never seen a vaguely popular programming language use ¬ and that is available on all keyboards (for some weird reason).

It surely is not avaiable on mine. Maybe it's a local thing?

I believe UK keyboards?

I say this because when installing a new OS and it defaults to en-UK locale, some of my buttons on the right side of the keyboard do unexpected things (US here), and I always have to look up where exactly the single-quote button is. I believe sometimes that angle pops up.

I have only seen Applescript use it.

Presumably your usage is limited enough not to cover the entire unicode space, and even if you hit the current operator, it should be trivial to update all previous work with a new character, since its prior usage was unambiguous (literally character replacement).

Tbh if you're assuming unicode input (which pollen does), and assuming its easy to write the character (which it is, given that system hotkeys for unicode are available or can be made available on most/all target systems), then it seems to me absurd to use the normal ascii character + escape character operators for embedding functionality in text

Sure, but it's absurd to have to set up custom text entry for an unusual character just to use a programming language. Especially when every other template language manages to do so with characters I don't have to customize my text editor to simply type.

On Linux you can configure the combinations that the compose key accepts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com