Comic Mono
dtinth.github.io
dtinth.github.io
Many of the letterforms have been dramatically "straightened" -- a Comic Sans "m" is kind of hideous, with the three vertical strokes intentionally all at different angles... whereas in this one they're all essentially vertical.
Comic Sans is ugly because it's terribly proportioned (intentionally) to mimic the way a child would write. But when you straighten everything and the letters necessarily fit into a grid... it's just much, much nicer aesthetically.
Just a gentle "handwriting mono" font, rather than the original which is (again, intentionally) horribly kerned and where half the letterforms feel like they're about to topple over from imbalance.
https://www.myfonts.com/collections/comic-code-font-tabular-...
This is largely because it was specifically designed to be readable on low resolution screens without sub-pixel rendering (which wasn't a thing at the time as on a great many Windows machines you could only really rely on the standard 16 colour palette). It is also part of why other fonts with similar target aesthetics look much better in print and on more modern devices - techniques used to improve it for low resolution use have a detrimental effect when not using it that way.
> The main criticism is in its overuse.
The second is inappropriate use. It is still the better choice for child-hand-like writing if you are targeting 4-or-8-bit/pixel displays at 640*480 resolution (or not much more) on ~14 inch devices, but how many times is it actually used that way?
No, it was intended to mimic the style of comic book lettering, hence the name.
Part of the reason Comic Sans is reviled is because not only is it a terrible font, but it is also a far cry from actual comic book lettering.
Indeed, the creator used some comics as a starting point, but then tried to redraw the strokes with a mouse (!), and intentionally drew them wrong, not keeping them straight, etc.
So the goal was not to reproduce comic speech bubbles at all, but to create something instead "strange and childlike". You would never want to use it for actual comic book lettering.
From an interview [1]:
> They wanted all kinds of fonts – a lot of them strange and childlike. One program was called Microsoft Bob, which was designed to make computers more accessible to children. I booted it up and out walked this cartoon dog, talking with a speech bubble in Times New Roman. Dogs don’t talk in Times New Roman! Conceptually, it made no sense.
> So I had an idea to make a comic-style text and started looking at Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, graphic novels where the hand lettering was like a typeface... Instead, I looked at various letters and tried to mimic them on screen. There were no sketches or studies – it was just me drawing with a mouse, deleting whatever was wrong.
> I didn’t have to make straight lines, I didn’t have to make things look right, and that’s what I found fun. I was breaking the typography rules. My boss Robert Norton, whose mother Mary Norton wrote The Borrowers, said the “p” and “q” should mirror each other perfectly. I said: “No, it’s supposed to be wrong!”
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/mar/28/how-we-...
Ref: Vincent Connare: Comic Sans is the Best Font in the World https://youtu.be/xXdzBTeYZlE
I know it's useful for dyslexics but I've not seen anyone claim it was intentionally designed with that intent and I'm pretty sure that has been explained to be a happy coincidence in the past.
Ref2 doesn't state that, and I can't do video right now.
Edit: And neither does Ref1
It is still an interesting aspect of the typeface that doesn't get much attention though, although there are other typefaces that also try to help with dyslexia.
If you are interested in design, I still recommend watching the talk when you have the time. It has been a while since I watched it, but the designer is well spoken.
Fwiw my dyslexic friends feel no benefit from these fonts. Would love to hear other experiences.
https://www.indwes.edu/adult-graduate/ng-blog/stories/what-i...
Sorry again, I thought I remembered the designer talking about this in the video I referenced. I should have watched it again before referencing it.
I wonder if there are different sub-variants of dyslexia that work on different principles?
It gets mentioned in every single comment section I see on Comic Sans.
Looks like a good Friday font or for that codebase you despise opening, or a perfect prank for a developer who left their computer unlocked.
For the word split, it is easier to tell since they are side-b by-each, but still weird to look at without zooming in.
It's easy enough when either rendered as a larger font size, or if you lean in. But when small, those two letters are difficult.
I think that it's due to the really tall x-height, and the fact that letters sray 'in-line'. OP's 's' in particular goes terribly below baseline. Not sure if using the proper term here.
I wonder how much of font design is driven by each authors "local indentation in the font space". What's the push to move that indentation?
Sometimes I wonder what my employer’s IT department would think of me, having installed so many font files on my machine.
I also switch color themes regularly. Do you do that too?
If legibility is an issue then I would seriously recommend increasing the font size, I think that will do much more than choice of "most optimal" font. And if increased font size makes your code "harder to read", consider that someone else might be unable to use a smaller font and will be forced to read code with a larger font size.
I made some notes on how a font needs to be modified for printing code. To start with, a coding font needs heavier weight than a typical text face, and should be designed for greater word and line spacing.
If adapting a proportional font, it needs to have:
- minimum space width the same as n
- O0, Il1 distinguished
- @#$%& roughly equal size and color
- punctuation bolder and with more space
- ~\*+=-<> vertically aligned
ABCDEF
G -- pronounced lip
H
I -- must distinguish from l and 1
J -- not below line
KLMNOP
Q -- slash, not tail
RSTUVWXYZ
a -- two storey
bcdef
g -- tail, not double
h
i -- needs foot
jk
l -- needs foot
mnopqrstuvwxyz
1 -- needs foot
23456789
0 -- needs slash
! -- pronounced taper
@
# -- forward vertical slashes
$%^&
* -- centered, six point, point on top
- -- longer
_ -- not far below line, not touching
=+
( ), [ ], / \, { }, < > -- not touching each other, aligned vertically
;:'",.` -- bigger
?
| -- distinguish, maybe gap in middle
~ -- centeredNowadays I use a more classical monospace font, but I really liked to program in "Comic Sans" so now I use a font inspired by it for italics in my terminal.
It teaches me not to take myself too seriously
I’ve been using the normal Comic Sans for 3-4 years now. I don’t mind the non-monospaced-ness.
I think it sits between the submitted font and Monaco in terms of "seriousness".
Comic Mono – a legible monospace font - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27488524 - June 2021 (51 comments)
Comic Mono - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25520510 - Dec 2020 (216 comments)
screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/jVeZKgh.png
theme: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Whalesal...
See the spacing between ME and ams. Lowercase letter look more goofy, asymetrical.
I'm going to have to set it as my editor font and see how it goes.
And I just installed selected this in Rider, I’ll see how I feel about it tomorrow while working. It doesn’t look bad, but I think I prefer Cascadia Code which also has a bit of playfulness.
I do like this font Comic mono, though. A nice attempt to make a mono type more organic and less machine made.
So it's nice, but Fantasque Mono is still more legible for my eyes in general.
This font is nice, but it sort of "squares up" the letters to make them more uniform, which arguably makes it less readable compared to Comic Sans.
It should be noted that Comic Sans is also the preferred font for many dyslexics because of how readable it is.
People hate it because it's overused, but it is actually a very useful font.
Applying the same logic to this font, I feel like it would look good in stylized code snippets on a website, but I wouldn't use it in my code editor.
Why are people still telling others to hotlink random CDNs. Stop that. Just host the damned font files yourself. And seriously consider not using a custom web font at all.
Or per function, depending on test coverage & code quality…
Based on a skim of the write-up, it seems like the author passed a respin of comic sans through a couple scripts, maybe you could start from where they started and try to locate a nice continuous “shittyness” knob to tune.
Comic Sans is not a bad font, but people make fun of it because it is used where it shouldn't be. (I blame WordArt and its attitudes for most typography atrocities)
> Use of the OpenDyslexic font did not enhance text readability or reading speed. The study participants strongly preferred Verdana or Helvetica over the OpenDyslexic alternative.
https://blog.dyslexia.com/good-fonts-for-dyslexia-an-experim...
That they did best with the font sets that they were most likely to have been exposed to in the past does not necessarily mean that those fonts are the best for everyone.https://www.boia.org/blog/do-dyslexia-fonts-improve-accessib...
Man, I feel old.
- Comic Code is more heavily serifed - Comic Mono is "semi-serif" (a balanced blend between serif mono fonts & the sans-serif Comic Sans). Not sure why they both didn't go full sans-serif: I generally prefer serif code fonts but of these two I prefer the less seriffed variation, and Comic Sans literally has Sans in the name.
- Comic Code is more legible (for me) - the widths & kerning seem to leave clearer letter separation with equivalent character spacing.
- Comic Mono has nicer kerning (to my eye) - while legibility is a problem at small font-sizes, at larger font-sizes Comic Mono is more pleasing to read.
- Comic Mono was built by a Python script by a non-designer as open source-ish
- Comic Code was built by a font designer with commercial intent
- Comic Code includes more font variants (italics, ligatures)
I always liked how legible comic sans is. I propose we try it on HN for a week
EDIT:
Trying it out now, it's actually a lot nicer than I initially thought. I had to bump the text size up which was already larger than 14.