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Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu has the advantage of having a clear distinction between uppercase i and lowercase L.

In Arial, they're indistinguishable. In Roboto, you can see the difference if they're right next to each other (l is longer than I). Segoe UI has different variants but the one I've found on the MS web site has very similar or identical lI's, just like San Francsico.

I know, fixed width fonts would fix that, but not everything that should will be in those. And especially on a programming website, that matters.

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Those differences are more important on editors or programming websites, than for general text.

Reason being that in general text we don't read based on individual letters, we recognize "shapes" of words.

That's because it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Trebuchet MS is an okay choice for distinguishing between l and I. I like it as a happy medium between Arial and Verdana as far as "basic" fonts go.

Fixed width fonts don't always fix it depending on context. Consider

    Your Passcode is: 6234024

Is that an O (oh) or a 0 (zero). It's an Oh. Of course often in a fixed width font the zero has a slash through it but if there's no zero nearby to compare it to most people won't notice.

>It's an Oh

Is it actually a zero or am I missing something?

Looks like a zero to me. Unless it was supposed to be Ø?

It's a zero, right? Easily verifiable by copy-pasting it in a Python or JavaScript interpreter.

It's pretty noticeable with the monospace font that used on my system because O is more like a circle and 0 is thinner. There is no slash, and it is fortunate because it could be mistaken with Ø otherwise.

> There is no slash, and it is fortunate because it could be mistaken with Ø otherwise.

Another option, like on my system, is that zeros have a dot in the middle.

do you mean the ohs in 'Your' or 'passcode' or are you joking?

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