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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> Note that the raised appearance of `^` exists for compatibility with typewriters that use the backspace key to use it as a circumflex accent over lowercase letters. This is doubly obsolete today

The origins don’t really matter at this point. That’s what the character looks like and it’s what everyone expects.

Your use case is extremely niche. Making a font choice for that specific double-line situation would alienate everyone else who just wants the ^ to look like a ^.

Like others suggested, just use the Unicode arrows if you want arrows. Let the ^ be a classic ^.

It’s really disappointing when I find a new font that seems interesting until I encounter one weird design choice that makes it surprising to read. Fonts should be boring, typical, and follow what your brain expects to see, not trying to erase decades of typography norms and start something new for one common character.

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> Fonts should be boring, typical, and follow what your brain expects to see

So you're ok with permanent confusion of 0 vs O because "boring/expected" doesn't add a dot for zero?

> erase decades of typography norms and

This is not (such) a (n absolute) thing, there are different contradictory norms that persist for decades, just like in and artistic (though not only) field, so at a practical level this offers no guidance for any specific decision, you'd have to actually consider it in that specific case to see whether it makes sense

> So you're ok with permanent confusion of 0 vs O because "boring/expected" doesn't add a dot for zero?

0 and O are not actually confusing in any of the fonts I use. As I’m typing this comment without any custom font changes, the 0 has a slash through it. In other fonts I use there’s an option to add a dot. These are all normal and common.

Redrawing the ^ character to not be elevated would be unexpected.

> This is not (such) a (n absolute) thing, there are different contradictory norms that persist for decades,

Fonts are expected to show common characters as those character, not something different to satisfy a singular edge case at the expense of every common use case.

If someone wants vertical arrows they should use Unicode vertical arrows, not try to force everyone looking for a ^ character to see something unusual.

> in any of the fonts I use

But we're not talking about you, are we? You made a very general point, so look around... generally

> These are all normal and common.

Again, look around at most popular fonts in this wor(l)d, see how few of them have it. It's only "normal and common" in a small niche of code fonts. At most popular fonts would differentiate width, but that is a far legibility cry from the "exicting" innovation of using a dot. But that would be a surprising experience to most of the users because it's a rare occurence, so breaks your "be boring" maxim.

> Fonts are expected to show common characters as those character

In the case of 0 "as those characters" means an empty oval, so adding a dot/cross is "something differnt to satisfy a singular edge case" of basic legibility at the expense of "every common use case" of confused ovals between 0oO

Also, I finally looked into more details of the ^ and even more confused by your comments: one of the most popular fonts - Verdana - has ^ exactly like described by the OP - top reaching the top of U and bottom reaching the horizontal line in e. Similar with Arial, ony it raises higher than U Same in a popular code font Source Code Pro

So all your "don't mess with expectactions" is made up, they do not exist because that symbol is already popularly different, so there is no expectation that it's a tiny hat!!!

any particular glyph you find surprising in Myna? feel free to open a feature request.

None, and that’s the great feature about it.

The comment above requesting that ^ be turned into something unexpected would have been a negative, but thankfully it’s not a feature of the font.

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