[rubjo]

Typeface designer here. Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts about it.

I guess the point is that it wasn’t first and foremost designed to follow as many font design principles as possible. If that’s what’s important to you, pick a font that follows as many of these principles as possible. :D

In the end, I guess I don’t really care whether I use 157ms to parse a sentence instead of 158 - although to me, the font is absolutely super-legible.

[andreyvit]

Hey, I'm in love with this font, the moment I saw the web page, I knew I had to get it installed. Thank you so much!

Screenshot: https://dsc.cloud/cfce57/Screenshot-2023-11-19-at-9.31.58-PM...

[romwell]

Feels like your response could be abbreviated for clarity:

>Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts about it [...] In the end, I guess I don’t really care

[aeturnum]

It's a shame this is all you got from the response because I think what they said is actually a lot more interesting:

>Thanks for trying the font and having lots of thoughts. You're right that it doesn't follow all of the guidelines to maximize readability! There are other fonts that do that but mine does not. That's not what I'm interested in and it doesn't bother me - I find it to be perfectly readable.

I think an important part of maturing as a developer (and a human) is understanding that guidelines are always about maximizing certain qualities of something and that it's generally ok to choose not to focus on those things. Unless your customers are a captive population of some sort, generally we can all make whatever thing we want and let people who like it pick it up.

[romwell]

>I think what they said is actually a lot more interesting <...>

Your rewriting of the comment says exactly the same thing it did before. My assessment of it remains the same.

I think an important part of maturing as a developer (and a human) is realizing that it's better to say nothing at all than to write "it works for me, use something else if you don't like it" in response to criticism of work that you:

1. Publish online for public use;

2. Describe as "the best font for programming";

3. Set up a Patreon page to collect money for.

Note that the criticism was not addressed to the designer in the first place. The designer went out of their way to find and dismiss criticism with a non-informative "I guess I just don't care".

The critic explained why they strongly feel that e.g. curisve italics aren't a good feature for a programming font (moreso described as "the best" one). The designer added no context or insight into why they think differently other than "I don't care", which is, frankly, offputing.

It is also disingenuous to sum up the criticism as "does not follow all guidelines for readability". The criticism wasn't about following guidelines; it was about the font being hard to read.

Imagine a teacher telling a student their handwriting isn't legible, and the student responding with "I guess I don't care, following all the guidelines wasn't the goal in producing this work, and I myself can read this perfectly fine". We are not that far from this scenario here.

[aeturnum]

> realizing that it's better to say nothing at all than to write "it works for me, use something else if you don't like it"

It seems really important to clarify what you will and won't do in your projects. Setting aside the tone of the response - are you saying that people should respond to critique only with silence or agreement? Many open source projects could expand functionality in one direction or another and the fact that the team is not interested in particular directions is often valuable information.

>Imagine a teacher telling a student their handwriting isn't legible, and the student responding with "I guess I don't care, following all the guidelines wasn't the goal in producing this work, and I myself can read this perfectly fine".

I think this a great example to expand on because...it obviously depends! If you are turning in an essay and your teacher can't read it - you are going to get a zero. The font just needs to transmit the content and if it fails at that it's no good. But then you did not "[follow] all the guidelines" in producing the work because legibility was required.

On the other hand, unless the student is lying, then whatever they are producing text for doesn't need to be legible. They are free to make whatever text best serves their goals. Getting the feedback that it's not legible is important - but if legibility isn't a requirement then it's up to the author to decide how to use that note.

For me, the question is one of the venue of the "work": Who will be forced to deal with it? In this case the answer seems clearly to be: "no one." We are all free (or not) to use this font. It is not being used to make signage or publish books (and if it was it would be the responsibility of the authors of those works). The author has no responsibility to live up to any particular guidelines because they're doing what they please (and presenting it as such). People are allowed to think anything is "best" for anything! I might think Comic Sans is the best font for programming (though I imagine few people would agree).

I will also say that this example differs in that the complaint was not illegibility. crazygringo said "You can read it, but it simply takes more effort."

[romwell]

>It seems really important to clarify what you will and won't do in your projects.

Sure, but that's not what the designer did. Their comment didn't mention one specific change that they are (or aren't) going to implement.

"Nah, everything's fine, works for me" doesn't clarify anything about the font - just about the designer.

>Setting aside the tone of the response

Aside from the main issue I have with the communication, ....

>- are you saying that people should respond to critique only with silence or agreement?

No.

What I say is that a response to constructive, grounded criticism should be reciprocal. If you're already making an effort to object to grounded criticism, make a grounded objection.

The objection the deisgner made was little more than "works for me, like it or leave it". There is zero value in that.

>Many open source projects could expand functionality in one direction or another and the fact that the team is not interested in particular directions is often valuable information.

Arugably, it is useful to know that the caretaker of the project is not giving any consideration to feedback. But that's not something I can commend.

"This font isn't going to follow all readability guidelines" doesn't actually communicate any information. You can't say what's on the roadmap for the font, other than it will be whatever the designer likes.

> For me, the question is one of the venue of the "work": Who will be forced to deal with it? In this case the answer seems clearly to be: "no one."

We are. The github page for that font is written entirely in that font.

I feel it's disengenous to say that you can't criticize a font because the only person that is "forced" to see it is the person that picks it for use, and otherwise, it's the responsibility of that person.

By that logic, all fonts are above critcism!

>If you are turning in an essay and your teacher can't read it - you are going to get a zero

The work (the font and its description, written in that font) has been presented to us for grading, and it was graded accordingly.

>I will also say that this example differs in that the complaint was not illegibility. crazygringo said "You can read it, but it simply takes more effort."

According to [1], the property of being hard to read makes text illegible.

The point at which the text becomes illegible rather than simply "taking more effort to read" is subjective, I am not going to die on that hill.

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/illegible

[J_cst]

That was over 9000!

[rubjo]

Thanks for understanding :)

[caslon]

What's wrong with that? A person isn't obligated to have an open source maintainer care about their opinions on where their project should go, even if it can be helpful for them to consider objections. Especially when the opinions are simply, "Your entire set of principles are wrong, and this is aggressively bad."

[romwell]

>What's wrong with that?

Going out of one's way to tell to a person that wasn't talking to you in the first place to say that you don't care about what they said.

>Especially when the opinions are simply, "Your entire set of principles are wrong, and this is aggressively bad."

You may notice that the criticism is written in several well-structured and reasoned paragraphs, and not that one line. Perhaps your summary doesn't reflect what was said.

[pdpi]

The roman style is pretty legible, yes, and I . The italic, though? It's not a 157ms vs 158ms difference, I legitimately struggle reading it at all, which is a shame because I really like the roman style.

[rubjo]

Well, then I guess you can just not use the italic style, or just substitute it for the oblique alternative, or choose not to use slanted style at all, maybe…?

[sombragris]

Hey, thanks for designing it. Right now I'm using Iosevka but I loved Victor Mono, was my main terminal typeface for a long time, and I loved the high x-height which enhanced readability even at low sizes.

Even today it's one of my recommendations for anyone looking for a coding/monospace font.

[rubjo]

That’s really nice to hear! Yeah, Iosevka is an absolute beauty :)

[redleader55]

I'm surprised you as a typeface designer are not interested in what end-users(aren't they the customers?) are saying about the font. This means, assuming good intent, that's not where the money is coming from.

Can someone shed some light on who pays typeface designers and what are the incentives like?

[admax88qqq]

I think he meant he's the designer of _this_ typeface. Not in general. And for _this_ typeface as a labour of love why shouldn't they disregard user feedback when they made it for their own purposes.

[nilamo]

Can it not just be something that's done for fun, for the benefit of whoever made it?

[cosmojg]

Sometimes, people do things for fun.

[tokai]

The supporters listed on the page pays.

[roland35]

Hey that's the beautiful thing about being human, in my opinion :) we all prefer different things and that is OK! Otherwise, we wouldn't need menus at any restaurant since everyone would just get the same "food".

Fwiw I like the font and I'm looking forward to trying it out!

[zare_st]

Well you made it explicitly for programming purposes. I am not a poll house or a public opinion evaluator. But handwritten cursive and programming I wouldn't put in a same sentence.

The ligatures and the height you choose really don't go well with a lot of popular programming languages.

I'm not sure what aspect of programming do you believe is "inhumane" so you have desire to introduce "humanity" through design choice.

[rubjo]

Heh well actually I made the font for my own use.

Some others have liked it, others have critized features of it, like the italics and the ligatures. (Features one can easily disable in most sane editors, I might add).

I’ve been using it daily ever since I made it, and I like to believe it makes me effective and happy.

No one should obviously pick a font which is hard to read for them of slows them down. This font doesn’t do that for me personally. If it does that for you, yes, you should probably pick a font where legibility has been the sole focus. (Dyslexia fonts for programming, maybe?)

[jbverschoor]

What I like about it is that it makes more use of the vertical space. In programming, almost everything is lowercase or titlecase (snake/camel are the same), so I prefer to have the higher x-height. It's the most legible typeface for me, and I've tried many

[fullstopslash]

I /adore/ the italics. It's the major thing that keeps me on this font above all others.

[romwell]

>Heh well actually I made the font for my own use.

Perhaps you should change the banner on the github page to reflect that. Currently, it says "the best programming font"; whereas your comment implies it is merely "the best font for rubjo".

Same goes for your Patreon page. When you take other people's money, you say:

>It means a lot to me that you choose to support me this way. With your contribution, I can cover some of the costs for the software and the time used designing the font. Issues / feature requests you might have will be prioritised when possible.

Obviously, it should say (quoting your comments here):

>Thanks for trying the font. In the end, I guess I don't really care. Issues / feature requests you might have... heh well actually I made the font for my own use. :D You should probably pick a font where legibility has been the sole focus.

>To me, the font is absolutely super-legible. If this font is hard to read for you or slows you down, yes, you should probably pick Dyslexia fonts.

Finally, saying that people who don't find your font legible should probably use fonts specifically designed for people with Dyslexia is just... ugh.

Especially coming from someone who writes phrases like these:

- font which is hard to read for them of slows them down

- others have critized features of it

In the end, it's not about the font. It's about how you respond to people who "critize" your work.

And "works for me, have you considered you're dyslexic?" is not a great response. You can do better, and I hope you will.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38334154

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38334764

[rubjo]

You might be firing yourself up a little too much over an opinionated font which is being offered for free. The web site banner and slogans are ehh lets say intentionally and super-obviously grand, if you get what I mean. (?)

I shared it so anyone else who likes it also can use it. It works really well for me. A few others have told me the same. That’s more than enough for me. It’s great that you have found something else that works for you. Peace, man! :)

[romwell]

>You might be firing yourself up a little too much

Why, I'm not "firing myself up" at all. To the contrary, it's rather calming to talk about fonts rather than wars.

> The web site banner and slogans are ehh lets say intentionally and super-obviously grand, if you get what I mean. (?)

So is your attitude towards feedback, if you get what I mean. (?)

>I shared it so anyone else who likes it also can use it. It works really well for me. A few others have told me the same. That’s more than enough for me.

The fact that you have donation links, a Patreon page, and a merch store[1] indicates otherwise.

Clearly, "a few people telling you it works for them" wasn't enough; you'd also like people to give you money and buy your merch so that you could make a living doing this.

From your Patreon:

>If everyone who visited the font home page and downloaded the font had contributed like you do, I could have developed Victor Mono and other fonts as a full-time job.

So... yeah.

>It’s great that you have found something else that works for you

How would you know that?

>Peace, man! :)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[1] https://victor-mono.myspreadshop.com/

[rubjo]

I feel genuinely sorry for you and send you the warmest wishes for a joyous holiday season and a happy New Year!

[enriquec]

I've been programming 20 years and I use one of these combined sans/cursive font setups. I like less legibility for certain parts of the code - like keywords/decorators that I can recognize instantly but want to skip reading/parsing when I want, for instance, to just read function names in collapsed code. I typically set stuff like this to a color closer to the BG too.

[rubjo]

Yeah, this point exactly - intentionally altering or even subduing some parts of the code using color or style to actually recognize blocks of code more quickly. Maybe everything being at 110% legibility all the time makes the whole more time-consuming to scan sometimes. Maybe.

[aaarrm]

They specifically noted the principles they were designing for in the link if you scroll down, so you can see what their goals were.