Curated List of Open-Source Typefaces
beautifulwebtype.com
beautifulwebtype.com
At the end of last year/beginning of this year, I was working on this site heavily and attempted to use Patreon to fund the project. Ultimately, I didn't see enough interest and scaled back my time on it.
I still think it's a worthy goal to give an in-depth overview of the best typefaces, but I'm still looking for the right way of promoting and funding the project.
Lots of projects don't want to spend big on type but the designer can still probably expense a printed book to act as a catalog.
Step 2 is to eliminate anything with an "@" that doesn't have all 4 vertical lines when cut horizontally. That is, it should contain a full "a" of some sort, without the loss of a gap between the "a" and the surrounding circle.
After that there won't be many fonts left. Prefer a "$" that has both vertical bars. Prefer (){}{} that are tall, reaching both above and below a "X".
Make note of the tilde, asterisk, "a", and "g". These are notable for the style they give the font, but it is less clear what might be best.
My go-to in most situations is still the Source Pro family, but so many people seem to swear by Fira Code that I need to give it a try. (Although I'm not yet sold on ligatures)
Source Code Pro just seems to fit all my applications well - terminals, emacs, vim, visual studio code. Plus the serif and sans serif versions look good to me in the browser.
(Disclaimer: Have no affiliation with the TypeFace creator).
For the sake of people who will be very happy to discover it, please do add it (unless you think it doesn't deserve a place on your list).
IMHO, regarding your concerns: (1) You can have a prominent link to the Inter UI site, as I'd expect you would to any typeface's web home. (2) Every typeface you include has gone through a bunch of revisions. Even if you don't yet have an automated way of handling updates, there's still value in the aggregation.