Tiresias typeface | Hacker News Reader

Tiresias typeface

en.wikipedia.org

86 pointsTajnymag27 comments

In the same vein it's worth checking out Atkinson Hyperlegible -- a typeface that I find utterly beautiful and I've personally found legible at extremely tiny sizes.

https://brailleinstitute.org/freefont

I really, really want a monospace version, and while they've made the font "free software" (someone I know emailed them to double check the license), I lack the necessary knowledge to do that

I really like that font. Nice find.

That's neat! I went looking for same thing. Checking out iosevka [0][1] now.

[0] http://thedarnedestthing.com/iosevka%20hyperlegible

[1] https://github.com/sdothum/dotfiles/tree/master/fonts/.fonts

I've used iosevka for years - the thing that makes it truly brilliant is you can configure it however you want based on the characters you prefer.

I have iosevka-<myname>.ttf on all my machines with it tuned just how I like it.

> I really, really want a monospace version, and while they've made the font "free software" (someone I know emailed them to double check the license), I lack the necessary knowledge to do that

OCR-B font has been around for many decades and doesn't seem all that different in style.

Font design is all about the subtleties. I'm pretty sure most discrete classes of fonts look the same, distinguished by how they handle specific characters, and style and position the letters.

According to this video which consulted the available research on the topic (and has links to the actual research papers in the description), the legibility of Tiresias for people with impaired vision is unfounded (Can’t look for the specific research right now because I’m on the go):

https://youtu.be/41i9EN9l8uc

I had also seen criticism of it here: https://screenfont.ca/learn/

Not linked to in the Wiki article for some reason.

In Greek mythology, Tiresias (/taɪˈriːsiəs/; Greek: Τειρεσίας, Teiresias) was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo.[1] Tiresias participated fully in seven generations in Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus himself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiresias

Added. Thanks for the reference.

I'd be interested to read more on what makes it particularly well-suited for impaired vision.

Unlike Comic Sans, which is noticeably distinct almost to the point of being displeasing, this just looks like a relatively standard sans-serif typeface.

It doesn't need to be noticeably distinct from other fonts, it needs to be legible - each glyph needs to be clearly distinct from every other glyph, and still recognizable when blurry.

That said, IMO, it fails the 0/O usecase, though it passes the 1/I/l usecase.

Could you fix it with a dotted 0?

Dotted or slashed, yup.

Please don't use slashed O because then it is hard to distinguish the Norwegian/Danish character:

"Ø (or minuscule: ø) is a vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Norwegian, Faroese, and Southern Sami languages. It is mostly used as a representation of mid front rounded vowels, such as [ø] and [œ], except for Southern Sámi where it is used as an [oe] diphthong."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98

Since 2017 I have used the Go (Golang) Monospace TrueType fonts:

https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts

They are clear, unambiguous, and pleasing to the eye!

It's 2021, why are sans-serif typefaces still the most common way to read text? My 4K monitor can render detailed serif typefaces at very small sizes which are nicer and more legible than most of the text in the internet.

Because most people aren't using 4k monitors.

If only the world had both your eyes and monitor. I have a large 5K display and don’t find serif text nearly as easy to read, especially at small sizes, unless it’s printed out on paper.

I think this is the font used in the BBC's Red Button

What is the correct pronunciation of tiresias?

Tea-re-sea-ass

This is correct for the Greek pronunciation, though "re" should be read with a short "e", which is impossible in English, so "ray" is more accurate. The English is /taɪˈriːsiəs/, as above, I guess.

Tea-ray-SEA-ass

Isn't /taɪ/ supposed to sound like tie and /ti/ like tea? And the short e would be /ɛ/, as in check, bet or ten? Perhaps I'm missing something, my English pronunciation is pretty inconsistent.

Yes, that is exactly right. The IPA was meant to be how it's pronounced in English, the phonetic is how it's pronounced in Greek, except the e is as you say.

I guess it's the same as in Tiresias (/taɪˈriːsiəs/) [1], the blind prophet from Greek mythology.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiresias

Funny seeing this linked here. Tiresias is honestly a fairly unremarkable typeface with a lot of marketing talk, heavily inspired by earlier humanist sans-serifs like FF Meta, but I remember seeing it as a UI font across several different manufacturers of TVs and set-top boxes (Sony, Panasonic, probably others) some years ago and finding it curious that they used the same (obscure) font. Maybe it was part of some embedded OS, or they just managed to sell some big companies on it.

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