Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-hated typeface | Hacker News Reader

Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-hated typeface

myfonts.com

284 pointsFabianBeiner137 comments

I know people really hate Comic Sans, but it has some really useful properties.

One particularly useful property, especially in the education sector, is that dyslexics typically find it decidedly easier to read. Comic Sans uses distinct shapes for each character, e.g. no 'p' rotated to be 'q', and a variety of different sizes, all of which help make it easier for dyslexics.

AIGA article on the subject: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/sad-but-true-comic-sans-might-j...

From a bit by the British Dyslexic Association: https://bdatech.org/what-technology/typefaces-for-dyslexia/ Studies showed the following characteristics as being desired:

* Good ascenders and descenders, b, d, f, h, k, l, t, and all capitals; g, j, p, q, y. * b and d; p and q distinguished, not mirror images. * Different forms for capital I, lowercase l and digit 1. * Rounded g as in handwriting. Most liked rounded a, although perhaps some felt that it may be confused with o. * Letter-spacing, e.g. r, n together rn should not look like m, (‘modern’ may scan as, or sound like, ‘modem’.)

And their summary on Comic Sans MS: "It meets all dyslexic ‘likes’ except mirrored b and d."

More recent research showed no benefit from a font designed for dyslexics:

"Dyslexie font does not benefit reading in children with or without dyslexia"

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11881-017-0154-...

Use a different font then. I know dyslexic people who have had dyslexic fonts installed on their school computers because they found it amazing. If a report says it's no use, try a different dyslexic font...or read a different report!

... or get different sets of dyslexics for your experimentation, until you find one that validates your hypothesis!

Research which needs to be evaluated itself, could be biased, methodologically wrong, etc. In the end dyslectics konw waht tehy konw!

> In the end dyslectics konw waht tehy konw!

God dammit, now you're making me wonder!

Shower thought: are dyslexics just multicore literates?

No need for multicore literacy, just concurrent

They are without mutex, lock free, running with race conditions.

Oddly, this monospace version has a different style 'a', instead of the 'hand-written' original, which is unfortunate. I understood that one of the benefits of the original comic sans was that each letter was designed exactly as kids learn to write (e.g. no strange flourishes on the bottom of 'g' or the top of 'a'), making its legibility popular in classrooms.

it looks like it has both

I originally had the so-called single-storey a by default, but it looked too confusing at coding text sizes. I even considered offering a "purist" version with that simpler a, but decided against it (too many options would confuse buyers). In my opinion, the simpler structure of a is better described as "writability" rather than legibility, and just because the new design does not follow the original does not mean it's bad. Whether it actually improved is a matter of opinion, but I believe in my decision in the context of coding.

You could provide it as an OpenType variant (so buyers don't really even need to think about it at all unless they really want it, at which point they already have it).

You do have both as OpenType variants, it's just that text editors generally don't support that.

I just gave it a try... It has ligatures listed as a feature, but don't seem to be seeing the conversion of char sequences like I do in Fira Code. (E.g., in Vscode or VS with ligatures enabled, => turns into a "fat arrow", === turns into "a 3-bar equiv", etc.)

Yeah, I agree, it makes sense to target the legibility at small sizes, given the expected use as a coding font - rather than a 500pt poster printout on a classroom wall!

I wonder, is there any tool that measures the similarity of letters / glyphs(?) in a font, specifically as a way to highlight ambiguous letters? That might be handy when designing or choosing a font for coding.

It would be nice if you could add screenshots of the font used in different code editors to your sales page.

There's one other difference that makes the lower case "a" stand out. The other characters have a slight rightward lean(there's probably a technical term for that). The lower case "a" is the opposite, and it really stands out.

I was actually taught to write the "double-storey" 'a' (but not the 'g', although I later taught myself to do it in order to reduce ambiguity), so I suspect it could largely be something regional. I was also taught to write serifs and slash zeros, which felt unnecessary at first but it definitely helps readability, especially with letters like 1Il.

I've also received comments that my writing looks like an actual font, so I tried finding one on the font identification sites, but none of them are really a close match; a good description of it would be "calligraphic version of Times New Roman".

I'll never forget the teacher who marked my exam question wrong because I wrote the result as a slashed zero and not a regular zero. When I asked the Prof, he told me that "a slashed zero is the empty symbol." This was not an exam about sets.

But I learned my lesson and never slashed my zeroes again.

I thought the empty symbol extended the slash outside the circle (ø) and a zero kept it inside.

Yes, but handwriting can get sloppy.

People often forget one of the reasons Comic Sans is so popular is because of these properties, and cyclically the reason it's so hated is because people can't help but see it everywhere.

An Irish fiddler of some note once quipped, "What's the difference between a great tune and a hackneyed tune? About 20 years."

(Tunes come back around. They get so worn out, and "institutionalized" people stop actually playing them for fun. Then, if they fade back into obscurity, another generation can "discover" them again.)

The problem is that fonts (like tunes) can carry their own context with them. But people are very sensitive to music and very insensitive to fonts.

E.g. it is more likely to get an funeral invitation in Comic Sans than to hear the musical equivalent of Comic Sans on a funeral (assuming both was selected by a relative).

People are extremely careless in their use of fonts and don’t think about the additional context their font choice carries to anybody reading. A bit like people who write with capslock on and don’t even think about how this changes how their message is perceived on the other end.

And Comic Sans is the cristalization of that phenomena, precisely because it is so recognizeable: nobody cares if you write all lowercase after all.

A good example of that is resumes. A friend thought his resume was good but could not understand why he got turned down every time he applied for a job.

I picked an appropriate font, aligned things a bit in the layout and made good use of a couple of white space. 5min job, minor tweaks, zero copy changes.

Suddenly he got loads of positive replies to his applications.

The target crowd was not one aware of typography nor design knowledge. The volume of applications was also entering the realm of statistically significant.

Almost 20 years ago, we shipped a game called The Sims that used Comic Sans all throughout, that sold pretty well in spite of the font. Although maybe it's one reason some people are sick and tired of Comic Sans.

https://www.caseyconnect.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media...

When to use Comic Sans:

https://www.caseyconnect.com/blog/2013/typography/comic-sans...

>The Sims Comic Sans in-game text

>Because of it's lighthearted nature, Comic Sans might be appropriate for design situations where humor or lack of seriousness is appropriate. One example of this is the simulation game The Sims, where Comic Sans was used for all in-game text. Materials appropriate for children might also benefit from the use of Comic Sans.

In case you can't stand to read Comic Sans with your own eyes, I also made an external screen scraping utility called Simplifier that reads Comic Sans text off the screen, and catalogs and recites the product descriptions with a speech synthesizer.

Demo of The Sims Transmogrifier, RugOMatic, ShowNTell, Simplifier and Slice City:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imu1v3GecB8

I recently dug up an early internal pre-release demo of it for "The Sims Steering Committee" from June 4 1998, that convinced EA not to cancel our project. It shows a very early version of the user interface, that was already using Comic Sans. (So did the Quick Start Guide.)

The Sims Steering Committee - June 4 1998:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY

(Notice last word of the second paragraph of the Level 4 scenario description at 1:00! ;) Maybe the fact that it was written in Comic Sans enabled that little boo-boo to fly under the radar.)

Absolutely. And it was the perfect font choice for The Sims. I really like Comic Sans when it's used in the right context.

The other perfect application of Comic Sans was (wait for it....) Microsoft Comic Chat!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat

>Microsoft Comic Chat installed a custom font, Comic Sans MS, that users could use in other applications and documents. In 1996 it was bundled with several other fonts in Microsoft's Core Fonts for the Web project and subsequent versions of Microsoft Windows, leading to its notoriety among the internet.

https://chrisgliddon.com/a-trip-down-memory-lane-microsoft-c...

>While Microsoft’s Comic Sans was first introduced in 1995 as part of a Windows 95 Plus Pack, the font was more likely cemented into many people’s minds for one or two reasons: 1) well-meaning, yet not-necessarily-design-savvy educators, and 2) being selected as the default font in a new internet chat application called Microsoft Comic Chat.

MS Comic Chat is still my favorite IRC client, even if it is completely useless for communication these days.

> An Irish fiddler of some note once quipped, "What's the difference between a great tune and a hackneyed tune? About 20 years."

TVTropes calls this phenomenon "Seinfeld Isn't Funny".

I think the Problem isn’t that it is everywhere, but it is a Font with a lot of character and people use it in all the inapropriate cases.

If you print a warning sign, the choice of Comic Sans (or Papyrus etc.) is incompatible with the message you wanna express. If you use Comic Sans for a childrens birthday invitation or well – a Comic – then your choice of font fits the message you are communicating.

Most Fonts that aren’t simple serif or sans-serif fonts add an additional message to the message you are conveying. Something neutral like an Helvetica/Arial/Calibri will not be perceived as conveying any additional context.

So fancy fonts essentially get into the way of your message if you don’t know what you are doing and this is the way Comic Sans got it’s reputation.

Additionally Comic Sans isn’t even that good of a Comic font to be honest..

This is the main reason people dislike the typeface. Its in the misuse not the design.

I can't be the only one who use Comic Sans ironically, in situations where it's as far from appropriate as could be...

OpenBSD presentation slides are done in Comic Sans… but it's hard to say if it's far from appropriate there, or actually 100% appropriate.

My interpretation of the openbsd slides are that it acts as a sort of turing test.

If you are the sort that is excessively bothered by our use of the comic-sans typeface. Then perhaps you are not a good fit for our project.

More and more, I see the the continued use of cvs as sort of the same thing. It works and it weeds out people who care more about how something is done then what is done.

I developed a layer for CVS that provides directory structure versioning, symbolic links and execute permissions. Plus more: branches with merge tracking workflow for repeated merges, and a grab command that imports snapshots, identifying renamed/moved files, with symlink tracking.

That was 17 years ago.

People still using CVS in 2019 and not taking advantage of Meta-CVS are in a pretty special category.

https://web.archive.org/web/20061230063314/http://users.foot...

This is sounds awesome. Would you suggest CVS or SVN for new deployments?

The web page for this is alive, actually:

http://www.kylheku.com/~kaz/mcvs.html

I added the missing 1.1.98 tarball. Also, just tagged 1.2 which picks up some subsequent changes. (Last time anything was touched was 2014).

I wouldn't recommend CVS or SVN for any new deployments.

Even with Meta-CVS, CVS still sucks at the infrastructural level: the branching model and so on.

Meta-CVS has better support than Git for tracking changes in the directory structure, but that's not enough to offset the downside of being based on CVS.

Someone should port Meta-CVS to Git.

> If you are the sort that is excessively bothered by our use of the comic-sans typeface. Then perhaps you are not a good fit for our project.

This is exactly what happened to me. I was thinking about installing OpenBSD, but then watched a presentation were Theo used Comic Sans and it put me off the whole project. The thing is: every OS has specific details turning me away from them: Linux, the BSDs, Windows, Android, MacOS.

Maybe I should stop using computers altogether, or maybe I should go with the flow and accept that everything and everyone in this world is mediocre and being a perfectionist is a fatal weakness.

The brightest and most productive people I've known can turn off perfectionism at will. Or more accurately, they accept mediocre input from others to find the diamond in the rough. They also accept mediocrity in the process; they don't care if they're brute forcing a part of the solution as long as they know that all of the pieces of the big picture are in place. In other words, they focus on the right thing.

Then, they turn perfectionism on when it comes to their output. They make sure their writing is impeccable and that communication is clear, precise, and efficient.

Unfocused perfectionism is a curse. It's a cause or a symptom of self-sabotage. Probably both.

I love OpenBSD's utterly passive aggressive use of comic sans. To adapt a popular metaphor, it is going out and painting the bikeshed flourescent pink and green tartan, whilst everyone else is still trapped in the meeting.

More like pooping on the bikeshed, and then spreading that around and calling it "paint".

Simon Peyton Jones is also (in)famous for doing this.

> one of the reasons Comic Sans is so popular is because of these properties

I doubt most people who use it do so because they know it will make it easier for people with dyslexia to read. My mother uses it all the time because she thinks its cute.

Almost every use of the font is misuse. In all the supposedly correct uses for Comic Sans, the correct thing is to actually write by hand to create the true personal touch.

People hate the faked personal touch of a canned font that imitates writing which looks the same everywhere, letter for letter, no matter who produces the writing.

There is a middle ground: you can turn your own handwriting into a font.

Yeah. Write by hand, send by snail mail, takes a week for a reply.

No thanks. If my writing were turned into a font, it would be called Illegibilissimus. Keyboard for me whenever possible.

I even do my math with a keyboard using Macdown and Moeditor in real time. Don't even write by hand then.

I agree with your point about the fake personal touch, but I think this effect is because comic sans is so ubiquitous. A great alternative handwritten font is Architect's Daughter, which is free for personal use

I can't wait to try them it out on a tech talk later this month.

Comic Sans is really good for what it’s designed for — 9pt dialogue in comic speech bubbles.

It's really really really terrible for anything else.

> It's really really really terrible for anything else.

That's your opinion. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole

Comic Sans is a good font if you want to make the thing look like it was made by a six year old on a computer. It is the printed equivalent of a lazy note written onto a crumbled sheet of paper by somebody who yet has to drink their first coffee of the day.

Comic Sans are the equivalent of office calendar quotes like: “You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps”.

If this is the message you wanna get across, it is the perfect choice. For most other messages there are other more appropriate fonts (many of which can also be quite funky).

Comic Sans was my favourite font when I was 8 and made birthday invitations using it tho.

Nobody knows what font I was using when I typed this though. Better to use what is comfortable, or heck, more fun, than something boring because I'm supposed to be some kind of adult now.

The font doesn't bring these feelings. You do. What if the problem is just that people have decided that it's ok to get upset about a font they don't like? Maybe people should try not to do that instead.

> more appropriate fonts

There are only two things that determine the appropriateness of a font:

1) Readability

2) The aesthetic desire of the person writing the message

Nobody ever says that Comic Sans isn't readable, generally readability is considered to be one of its virtues. People just think that the aesthetic desire of the reader should triumph over the aesthetic desire of the writer, and there they are wrong.

Can't we design a font specifically for dyslexics without resorting to an ugly one that accidentally works, and that fixes b and d also?

Sure. You'll just need to differentiate [i, j, I, l , 1], [o, O, 0, Q, G], [a, e], [E, 3], [S, 2, 5, Z], [A, 4, h], [B, 8], [L, 7, J], [6, 9, , [R, P, d, b, p, q, g, y] , [M, m, w, v, u, n, W, V], [X, x, k, K].

There have been a few (OpenDyslexic, Dyslexie, and others). However, to my knowledge no significant improvement has been shown over other, more common sans-serif fonts, despite several studies having been conducted.

They don't hate it because of a direct, well thought out opinion they've made. They just like to jump on the hate bandwagon because it's the thing to do.

Comic Sans, or something closely similar, seems to be a preferred font for chord symbols and other indications in sheet music. I encounter it a lot, playing jazz. Maybe there's something about readability under adverse conditions, e.g., under low light, at a distance, with lots of distractions.

And like kindergarten material, the chord symbols in good music charts are printed big.

> One particularly useful property, especially in the education sector, is that dyslexics typically find it decidedly easier to read.

If you can find me an actual study on this, you'll be the first. The claim appears to be a common myth: https://www.tes.com/news/does-comic-sans-help-dyslexic-learn...

Hi, I'm the designer of Comic Code. I just wanted to join the discussion here, just because it looked fun. I know I released a Comic Sans variant, and I'm totally okay with the negative reaction; in fact it puts a big smile on my face. A world where everyone loves Comic Sans sounds wrong, doesn't it?.

I used to hate Comic Sans but it's still an interesting typeface that teaches you a lot about typography. Comic Sans can be a great choice depending on the context, and I want to share my personal favourite. When I went to a restaurant in Istanbul, they gave me menus in Turkish and English. The former was set in Comic Sans and the latter in Frutiger. The English menu looked so much like an office document and the Turkish one looked much more appetising (and I wished I could read Turkish). That was a genuine time when Comic Sans beat Frutiger.

Despite its quirky letterforms, it performs surprisingly well on screen. And I have seen people trying to use Comic Sans for coding too, most notably Simon Peyton Jones. Programming/coding is also a corner of typography where writing aspect plays a lot compared to others (e.g. user interface), so I found handwriting fonts quite fitting too. I think Comic Code also helps coding beginners who may be intimidated by the cold and mechanical visual of codes. I for one am easily bored while writing codes in regular sans serif. Coding environment is a very personal space and there is no need to look professional. I didn't need maximum clarity or efficiency in my coding typeface, but I wanted to have fun coding.

I think Comic Sans, for some people anyway, is something the internet told you to hate. I do see flaws in the typeface and I tried to improve it in my design, but I don't think you should be ashamed of liking Comic Sans. It's not even a bad typeface, and I have seen worse, many times. There is no bad typeface, only bad typography. (That's not strictly true but generally the case for Comic Sans)

Sorry for the long post. If you have suggestions (e.g. what glyphs and ligatures added), I'm all ears.

I actually... don't mind it. $15 is a bit much for me to pop on something I'm likely to spend some time giggling at (or maybe pranking some colleagues with... hmmm), but it really does look like the best of both worlds between comic sans and a monospace terminal font. Whatever that is. Anyways, well done!

Thanks! I have taken the idea very seriously and made sure it works as a workhorse coding font so that your purchase will not end up as a joke (it still may, that's up to your taste of course). There is Coding Essentials pack that gives you the usual four weights (Reg, Ita, Bol, BolIta) plus bonus weights.

Is there anywhere except MyFonts to buy a license? The website is incredibly frustrating, it takes upwards of 20 seconds to do anything, and it's not clear to me how I can actually check out.

I still can't get the checkout page to actually appear, it just waits forever (but there's no loading spinner, so I guess it's some huge script running on every page load?)

P.S. It's nice to see a full set of basic Cyrillic and Hellenic characters.

Thanks, in my humble opinion, the Cyrillic and Greek are actually better in Comic Code despite being monospaced. Unfortunately I am not allowed to sell the fonts elsewhere, so you may want to send a feedback to the website. I am sorry for the inconvenience.

I was expecting to laugh at how ugly it is, but it actually looks really nice! I bought the essentials pack to replace operator mono, which I've become bored with. Good job!

Edit: It looks really great with a theme that supports italics: https://imgur.com/a/VYH1J8s

Thanks! That capital T looks kinda broken in this screenshot though. What OS and editor are you using, and what font size?

Yeah, I was going to file a bug for that; it's vscode at 16px with the monokai pro theme, Windows 10.

Looks like a great font... curious if you might be willing to add the missing glyphs for CP437 (mostly missing block and line drawing characters)... would love to use this as a web terminal font option.

Thanks, I can do that.

I would probably actually use this, but that price is really high for what this is. $100 for the full family? really?

I know the typeface looks childish, but that does not mean it was made poorly; I spent a lot of time making this typeface actually capable of serious business. Also you can easily find coding typefaces with higher price but with fewer characters and sometimes no italics. Besides, there is a smaller pack called Coding Essentials, so you do not need to buy the whole family (that wouldn't be so useful for coding anyway).

Just bought the Essentials package. $30 is a steal for something that I might use for 8+ hours per day. I can only imagine the amount of work and craftsmanship that you put into this, congrats!

For years I've used Fantasque Sans Mono [0] which is Comic Sans inspired:

> realization that at some point it looked like the mutant child of Comic Sans and Helvetica Neue.

[0] https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans

That actually looks good haha

It's great actually. I've used it for years as my text editor / terminal font.

Compare it to your font of choice in this handy app:

https://app.programmingfonts.org/#fantasque-sans

There was once an “Ask HN: What Font do you use for Programming?”. Most folks chose mono-space standards. One guy said “Comic Sans - to remind me to be humble.” I like that sentiment and I hope that he will enjoy this font.

Honest question, buying fonts is still a thing nowadays with all the free fonts everywhere? (google fonts and others)

It definitely is. Some of the best fonts are still paid. And there are only so many high-quality free-fonts. That said, I haven't personally purchased a font (or worked for a company that purchased a font) for several years.

I can't imagine who would pay for this particular font :/

I can see Dinesh buying it just to make Gilfoyle's skin crawl.

I'd say yeah, I bought PragmataPro because it's a work of art and has great ligature support. Operator Mono is another popular choice.

I bought FF Kievit back in the day because it was the most beautiful thing I had ever saw. Now everything on the web is Proxima Nova and it is a boring, boring place.

In terms of ligature support, as a free alternative there is FiraCode... https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

Iosevka as well, which has custom builds (on of which is aimed at making it as like pragmata pro as possible and it is damn close).

Gorgeous font, bit of a bugger to build but once you get it working hours of tinkering ;)

Yeah, Fira Code is an excellent font, and it is something I have used in the past. PragmataPro looked prettier to my eyes so I bought it, that's all. In fact, it's linked as an alternative on that Github page.

The condensed look and lack of interlinear spacing of PPro are a nice bonus, not that there aren't other condensed fonts. I suppose for intl use PPro might be nice too since it has 9000+ glyphs, and the dev is still adding more.

One big problem with Fira Code is its lack of italics.

In addition to the other replies, there's more to a font than the shapes of the letters. "You get what you pay for" correlates even more strongly with things like hinting (internal instructions of how to try to align with pixel edges) than it does with the immediately visible appearance of the letterforms.

That's not a consideration for everyone, admittedly, but an incredibly important one for those who _do_ have to take it into account.

I'm also curious as to how this doesn't violate Microsoft's copyright on Comic Sans, since it's a derivative work being sold for profit.

From the about section: "Comic Code only takes inspiration from Comic Sans and was drawn entirely from scratch, in case you are wondering."

So that's effectively asking why Arial doesn't violate Helvetica's copyright.

Case law on copyright for fonts is complicated, with fonts generally having less protection than other works. My impression is that Comic Code is no more derivative of Comic Sans than, say, Arial is of Helvetica.

Hi, the designer here. As for the font name, Microsoft owns "Comic Sans" but not "Comic" or "Sans" alone. And as already explained, fonts are copyrighted as software codes and a new one has to be made from scratch (except of course when you are the owner or permitted in license agreement). In terms of visual similarity, Comic Neue is much closer to Comic Sans but MS hasn't done anything with it. If that's fine, Comic Code surely would be too. In any case, I did speak with the MS guys prior to release, and they saw no issues with either trademark or copyright.

Font IP is special!

The names are trademarks, so you can't copy them exactly, but you can use suggestive alternates. Palatino => Palatable, for example. TeX Gyre Pagella is a very nice version.

The code is copyrighted, so you can't copy the code exactly. But -- you can rasterize a font, print it, scan it, vectorize the output, add your own hints, and now have a clean re-implementation. The shapes of the letters are not copyrightable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...

Honest answer: that's a bit like asking "why buy games when there are so many free games available?"

Modern fonts are vastly more elaborate pieces of software than what people tend to think they are [1], and you get what you pay for. If you just need 56 letters, get a free font. If you need full Unicode Latin support, with proper kerning between each of the thousands of possible pairs, with ligature substitution for hundreds of tuples, not just for one language but several, with compositional repositioning for languages that require it, and alternate glyphs based on initial, median, final, or isolated letter form, and so on and so forth, then dollars will get you what free cannot.

Everyone can make a motivational jpg, but you need to pay a skilled digital artist to create a unique well composed new work. In the same vein, anyone can make a font, but you'll need to pay a skilled typographer (or foundry) if you want a well designed, feature rich typeface.

[1] https://pomax.github.io/CFF-glyphlet-fonts/

Seconded. The company I work for is currently commissioning a custom family of fonts from a major digital type foundry... and it's a vast (and expensive) undertaking. Consider potentially important features like support for[1]:

    font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums

For fonts with the support coded in, this variant means numbers in tables will line up in your font without outright switching to a monospace font. Beyond good glyph design, as the parent mentions, there's a lot of work to craft a professional modern font esp. the more of the Unicode language space it spans.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-varian...

The fact of modern vector fonts being software is what makes most fonts fall under copyright law in the first place in the US. Generally, absent actual software in the font file, typefaces aren't copyrightable at all. Pure bitmaps of typefaces are pretty much free for everyone to use. But if you use a protected vector font to generate those bitmaps, then they become infringing. Color of bits and all that.

This is also a US-centric comment. Other jurisdictions have differing rules to cover fonts and typefaces. In the US, however, it is fully legal to lawfully acquire a physical font specimen, scan that font, and do what you wish with it.

Caveat: IANAL

Same reason why a lot of people don't use things like material design. People want their designs to look good and stand out from the crowd - not have the same cookie cutter site as everything else.

Usually when I stop to admire the typography on a certain site it's almost always a paid font.

I started my career as a graphic designer, and I studied typography from an early age (my parents are both retired graphic designers and worked in the pre-digital era when designers really had to know their stuff). With the exception of a few well known typefaces (roboto, open sans, probably less than five in all) those free fonts suck. The kerning is terrible, there are usually no variants, they don't anti-alias well at different sizes, the international support is non-existent, etc. There is an absolutely insane amount of detail work that goes into designing a font and only the most OCD designers can pull it off, and only with an enormous amount of effort. If you spend 6 months to a year developing a font, you should be paid for it. Since I do notice these things I don't mind paying $100 for a font that ticks all of the above boxes. I stare at my IDE all day, and I wouldn't use a shitty color scheme, so I wouldn't use a shitty font on top of it.

Most of the "most over-hated" is just "hate" because it's cool.

If they see me hatin' maybe they think I'm a cultured techno-intelectual but a cool one.

Why is Comic Sans so reviled? Is it because it is one of the few fonts you are able to name?

It's like the mainstream view that ET is the worst game of all time. It is bad, yes, but not even close to the worst game of all time. Not even the worst mainstream game of all time.

Stop font is far worse than Comic Sans, and that garbage was showing up all the time in the 90s well into the 2000s.

https://fanart.tv/fanart/movies/5491/hdmovielogo/battlefield...

> Is it because it is one of the few fonts you are able to name?

More that people can name it and identify it. Plenty of people know what Arial is, and I'd imagine designers hate it far more, but most people can't distinguish it from Helvetica.

> Stop font is far worse than Comic Sans

Yeah, if the original San Francisco[1] had been made a TrueType font and become popular, it would be equally reviled.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(decorative_type...

> Why is Comic Sans so reviled?

This site sort of explains it (click to scroll): http://comicsanscriminal.com/

In a similar vein, I really like Comic Neue http://comicneue.com/

I want to hate on it, but it’s actually like the perfect intersection of monospace and sans-serif; I find it incredibly readable.

... awaiting OpenBSD wscons(4) soft font in 5.. 4.. 3..

Not open source, sadly.

You can turn the actual Comic Sans MS into a monospaced font using FongForge. I've made a short video about this back when [1]. You'll have to pause a lot, but the end result is pretty neat.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg7rWHsiAfQ

FWIW, I actually use the 'chalkboard' (apple's version of comic-sans) in my nvAlt (note-taking) app. Makes the feel a bit.

On a different note, it'd be interesting to pair this with a friendlier color scheme: https://twitter.com/lovemecomputer_/status/10903670151419985...

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=soft-aes...

I've never bought a font before. These seem crazy expensive. Is this kind of pricing normal?

I'd expect to pay maybe a dollar or two for a font; it really doesn't seem like it would provide enough value to be worth more than that.

I totally understand that it seems expensive especially if you haven't bought fonts before. Designers are more willing to pay for fonts since fonts are their tools and money maker, but most people do not make a money's worth out of font purchase. If you are in an environment where you think font choices can improve your productivity, I do recommend you consider buying one. To talk about our side, serious typeface design requires years of experience, and people who buy fonts are much smaller in number, compared to film and music, which is also why fonts seem pricy. Look at MyFonts and you will see Comic Code is actually on the cheaper side. There are sometimes good fonts made open source, but the principle that we need to get paid still applies; for those projects, it's just that they were paid by other companies like Mozilla and Google, not users.

Here is an open source option of monospaced Comic Sans, which seems to be a passion project rather than a paid one. It's a single weight with very small character count. I mean no harm to her project, but it does make a case for what you get for free vs money. https://github.com/shannpersand/comic-shanns

I wish that MyFonts has a better way to "test-drive" the font. When writing some small snippets of code, I wansn't exactly sure if it would work well.

Ended up purchasing it, and I must say, it's really fun to use! I find that it makes it easier to go from "focus mode" to "overview mode": it's very readable, but since it looks less blocky than most monospace fonts, I find it easier to navigate larger blocks of code.

I might not use it all the time, but this will keep me smiling for a while!

I'd like a Comic Sans without the intentional imperfections. Comic Sans puts a bit of wobble in the letters, as if being written by a careless person.

Alternately, with almost the same result, I'd like an Ariel with rounded tips.

What I'm wanting is nice geometrically clean letters done with a circle-tip pen.

You might be interested in Arial Rounded [0], a similarly over-hated font

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/arial-...

> I'd like a Comic Sans without the intentional imperfections

http://comicneue.com

Several years ago, I experimented with a monospaced CS-like font. It has only the ASCII set, but it's free.

https://www.dafont.com/pointfree.font

I wonder if machine learning could produce human looking comic book lettering? It seems like something it would be good at. Also, I bet it could produce human sounding drumming as well.

I unironically love this typeface. As soon as my main monitors are HiDPI, I'm liable to switch. It helps not to take things too seriously.

While I try not to be too pithy or snarky here on HN, the one thing sprung immediately to mind was:

Thanks, I hate it.

This font is way better than comic sans. I mean look at the m

hilarious - this is the incarnation of a psuedo joke that will never die on the internet. remember the dog? this was his font. now it can be all your coding too LOL

not to be confused with the comics code authority, the censorship body governing comics for part of the 20th century

Anybody know how to get this in vim?

Follows terminal font.

Down that Linux font rabbit hole, I guess.

Edit your terminal's font settings. Without knowing more about the setup you use, I can't be more helpful.

i would totally use this if it had nerdfont support and ligature support.

You're in luck; you can patch your own! https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts#font-patcher

yeah, but it wouldn't be in the same style.

Some glyphs wouldn't really replicate in the style of comic sans... plus, stuff like powerline glyphs wouldn't match up right.

How do you support ligatures for monospaced fonts?

The same way as in any other font. https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

You make sure all ligatures have widths that are integral multiples of the standard width.

If you’re strict, you make them the same width as the separate characters would be. If you’re less strict, you could, for example, have “⇒” or “½” be one character width, and not 2, respectively 3 (the latter probably would make you give up making a ligature for “1/2”)

Monoid also experimented with using ligatures for better kerning at some point, don't know if it still does that. I thought that was a neat idea, especially since that is kind-of-but-not-really what ligatures are for in the first place.

https://larsenwork.com/monoid/

It seems to have ligatures, no? Fourth screenshot shows them off.

At the bottom of the glyph listings it does show glyphs for a number of the major programming ligatures. Doesn't seem to be a full set, in at least because I don't see the "Powerline" PUA glyphs, but a good set of the more common ones at least.

Hi, the designer of the font here. This version has ligatures but OFF by default (it's called dlig feature, discretionary ligatures). A version of the same font that has ligatures ON by default will be released soon. I don't know ho many code editors support manual activation of OpenType features, so I advise you get that later version if you really want to use it. Sorry for the confusion from not releasing them at the same time.

To share my view on ligatures, there is a danger of making it hard to count letters and I see a lot of designs feeling too creative with the possibility. In my design, I wanted to have ligatures that are more easily countable (not all cases though), and try to find balance between the two camps.

wow. someone really took comic sans and started charging $100 for it.

Thanks, I hate it.

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