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Comment by omoikane | Hacker News Reader

Atkinson Hyperlegible appears to slash their zeroes in the same direction as backslash, unlike all other fonts I have used where the slash in slashed zeroes have the same direction as a forward slash. Not sure if this was a deliberate design choice.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible?prev...

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Inconsolata?preview.text=0...

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Probably since that it's intended for legibilty, it's to differentiate 0 from Ø.

I used a reverse-slashed zero in my programming font [1][2] for exactly that reason. I wanted it to be clearly distinct from an O with stroke (and by more than just the slash not extending past the bowl).

[1] http://eastfarthing.com/luculent/

[2] https://usemodify.com/fonts/luculent/

>it's to differentiate 0 from Ø [a letter used in Danish, Norwegian]

most importantly it's to differentiate it from ∅, mathematical null set.

"computer people" feel this understandable need to differentiate their zeroes, but "CS-is-math people" are like "but don't use null set!" <— ᵇᵘᵗ ʸᵒᵘ ʲᵘˢᵗ ᵘˢᵉᵈ ᶠᵃᶜᵗᵒʳᶦᵃˡ

Is the exclamation mark character for factorial different from ASCII x21?

No!

Hmm I think there are probably more Danish and Norwegian people than mathematicians writing about null sets.

No way, DK and NO aren't that big, and you learn about empty sets in HS in most of the world. I'd wager there are currently more Indian high schoolers than people in DK/NO.

In Germany (>20 years ago) we learned to use {}.

> you learn about empty sets in HS in most of the world

lol no.

You're (probably) correct, considering that the specimen used Ø instead of ∅ (see https://braileinstitute.app.box.com/s/gw2s8k5kfc6t1uabkiyqlc...), and the font do not have the null symbol.

(also like the German commenter the null set is an empty set = {}, I only encountered ⌀ as diameter symbol, actually)

Wow, what ever that website is doing manages to completely and utterly break my gpu rendering in a way I haven't seen a site do in over a decade. It just paints the text over whatever was there last, including other windows above my browser.

I use DejaVu Sans Mono for programming, it places a dot inside 0.

If you like DejaVu, you'll love BitstromWera Nerd Font [1] (looks almost the same, with some improvements). It works great with Starship [2].

[1] https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads

[2] https://starship.rs

A truly underrated font.

Possibly idiotic question: I'm fairly new to actually writing code myself in any thing more than a tinkering way. What do you use for programming where you can choose the typeface?

You mean a text editor where you can change your font? I am pretty sure most of them support that feature, VS Code just to mention one. Or do you mean other kind of tool?

Ubuntu Mono does too!

I just tested it (have tested it before, always looking for mono fonts)

DejaVu Sans Mono does not look anywhere near as good as Lucida Sans which is LibreOffice Calc's default for me, comparing just the numerals. The digits in this variable pitch font are fixed pitch so it's suitable for spreadsheets.

(I mentioned the extra marking on zeros in the spirit of the thread, but personally I don't care about it, I'm not mixing up letters and digits much irl or especially in a spreadsheet.)

but in any case, the DejaVu Sans Mono glyphs rise up above the baseline, floating in the cells, and they are larger for a given pointsize. I don't know whose fault this is, but my complaint is that every time I try to look at different fonts, the futz-around-and-find-out factor is so great it's just a waste of time. It's a problem across systems (windows, linux, mac), across generations (Motif, 3.1) it's a problem across apps, it's just a problem that's completely unnecessary. I think font people spend too much time looking at their font on a tabula rasa wedding invite, and not enough time doing comparative font selection in ordinary apps.

Theoretically, a slashed zero should not have the slash extending beyond the main body of the character, but in practice, especially in sloppy writing (when the slashed zero is more common) it often does. Also when designing a font for someone who has difficulties distinguishing character shapes, small differences like that may not be immediately obvious. Using a reverse slash immediately shows that it’s a zero without any clashes.

I think it’s a fairly elegant solution at the slight cost of being a little unfamiliar (although the slashed zero itself is quite unfamiliar to most people).

My guess is that the other fonts do it to differentiate the slash zero and the Norwegian letter Ø.

If that's true then AH's choice seems counterintuitive to me.

to be clear, atkinson hyperlegible slashes the zero in the opposite direction to the Ø.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible?prev...

Oh, ok. Thanks for pointing that out. In that case, I think their choice was justified to avoid confusion.

Thanks for pointing this out. It looked weird to me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why.

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