Foostruct v1.1

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by sebastianberns
57816114

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Foostruct v1.1 A monospaced pixel-font for programmers. This font was originally created in only one day and is still in progress. I’m very open to suggestions and improvements.

8 Comments

Foostruct v1.0
Comment by sebastianberns 8th september 2009
Firstly, I like this font. I have already given it a 10.

As you are open to suggestions I thought of a couple of things.

As the font is for programmers, the asterisk could, in my opinion, be improved by making it larger and lower. In programming, an asterisk is often used to indicate multiplication.

For example, y:=a*b; for multiplication.

Please compare this with y:=a+b; for addition, y:=a-b; for subtraction and y:=a/b; for division.

It looks, in my opinion, best when the asterisk is about the same size and at the same level as a plus sign.

So, I suggest that the font could be improved by copying the design used for the plus sign and its width and then adding extra pixels to make a design for an asterisk, without moving any of the pixels copied from the plus sign.

Also, on another matter, I cloned a copy of your font and found that all except the grave character of Basic Latin are included. I cannot recollect ever having used that grave character in programming, but I have a vague recollection that it is used in some specialized programming language. It would be better to add it to the font and maybe it would never be used rather than not add it and risk that someone might try to use it and find it not there.

I notice that you state that the font is monospaced. The uppercase and lowercase alphabets are, except for a slight change for j, monospaced. The digits are also monospaced to the same width. However, the punctuation is not monospaced.

Thus, as the font is not totally monospaced, would it be a good idea to make the M, W, m and w slightly wider than true monospaced, though not as wide as an ordinary font, so that it looks more monospaced than an ordinary font but is not totally monospaced? Just a couple of bricks, not a lot of bricks. Maybe have two fonts, one with M, W, m and w monospaced and one with M, W, m and w slightly wider?

Would widening M, W, m and w make the monospaced look of the font go wrong or would widening the M, W, m and w have the font keep a general look of being monospaced yet be more readable?

Another suggestion. It might be a good idea to go to the More Latin page and add characters for the Euro, Cent, Pound and Yen.

I am impressed by this font. I like the way that the basic double quotes character has an italic lean in it.
Comment by mathematician 9th september 2009
Great job. I know virtually nothing about programming ... but it sure looks the part :)
Comment by p2pnut 9th september 2009
@mathematician Thanks for your comment! I took your suggestion regarding the asterisk into consideration, made it a little bitter and lowered it slightly.
The font is in fact monospaced, as I adjusted the overall character width through »Preview > Advanced > Spacing«. Nevermind the individual widths, as they are ignored.
The only way to widen M, W, m and w is to increase the global width, adjust these four characters, but leave the others slightly slimmer. That’s what I did with j and the punctuation, they have the same width, but do not fill in the complete space.


Version 1.1 Update:
A C S V W X a d e f g j n p q s t v w x y
Improved asterisk
Added grave accent
Improved curly brackets
Added extended character set
Comment by sebastianberns 11th september 2009
@p2pnut Thanks! I have some experience in programming. Since a font suitable to display code needs to meet a few requirements, many programming fonts share certain features. The crossed 0 to be distinguishable from O, for example.
Comment by sebastianberns 11th september 2009
The letters of the font display very clearly.

I tried the following sentence.

The café by the bridge.

As this font is specifically for programmers, where proof-reading of strings is very important, I wonder if you could please consider the design of the accent in é and è and for the other characters that use one of those accents, including the capital letter versions.

Would those accents be clearer in WordPad if they were the same height as at present yet wider?

For some reason that I do not fully understand, fonts produced using FontStruct seem to need a much larger point size than do many other fonts. It is something to do with the font metrics.

This means that a fair comparison of FooStruct with, for example, Courier New, needs FooStruct to have double the point size used with Courier New so as to produce displayed designs at approximately the same size as Courier New.
Comment by mathematician 12th september 2009
Congratulations! FontStruct Staff have deemed your FontStruction worthy of special mention. “Foostruct v1.1” is now a Top Pick.
Comment by gferreira_admin 15th september 2009
All glyphs are nice and distinct and more or less an even gray text block. Nice work. You could try to make the square brackets more, er, square. And although I applaud that you added extended characters, but for a programming font, are they required? I may be revealing my ignorance here, but isn't all programming done in English (or whatever passes for English in programming)?
Comment by thalamic 15th september 2009

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