Archive for November, 2006
Preview of Envy Code R programming font
Envy Code R has been updated since this post.
My last post got me thinking – if I’m so happy with Envy Code B bar it’s ability to scale or take advantage of ClearType then there is only one real option. I reached for the pixelated TrueType conversion of Envy Code B and five hours later had a rough version of my first ever vector font – Envy Code R.
It’s unlikely I’ll be able to work on this before I get back from Japan so it will have to wait but here’s a sneak preview of it stacking up against Envy Code B and the current cool kid on the block Consolas.
The new font will try and be as much like Envy Code B at point size 10 whilst taking advantage of ClearType and hinting where possible. There is still a lot of work to do on the unusual symbols, foreign characters and increasing the curve emphasis whilst not destroying the scaled letterform versions.
Here’s a preview inside Visual Studio 2005:
I promise that’s all the font posts for a little while…
[)amien
Comparing programming fonts
The blogging about favourite programming fonts doesn’t seem to want to truly die down so here’s how I rate the most popular fonts for programming in descending order with my own Envy Code B which I use all the time – but now desperately needs the ClearType treatment.
If you click the image you’ll see red boxes highlighting what I feel are the various problem characters/positioning with each font.
Comments are welcome apart from people suggesting proportional fonts. Tried Tahoma, Verdana and a few others – I just plain don’t like proportional fonts for programming.
It seems many people are raving over Consolas but the x-y proportion just seems wrong to me – I prefer taller thinner characters for the odd longer line. Don’t get me started on the ugly lower-case g and ? or the fact that numbers are smaller than capital letters.
[)amien
InconsolataDG – Slashed zero’s
Inconsolata now incorporates slashed zero’s rendering my version redundant. It has therefore been removed.
I’ve been messing about with FontForge and the Inconsolata font and come up with my own variant – InconsolataDG.
This version includes a slashed zero and the position of the horizontal bar on the lower-case f dropped to stop the blurring at 9/10 points. A whole 10 minutes work most of which included installing and configuring FontForge.
I’d actually done more work on it previously in FontLab but it did strange things to the curves – apparently converting Bézier to quadratic with imperfect results.
You can find it at my InconsolataDG page which will be updated as I make some more changes I want (loosing the loop on the lower-case g, filling in some missing symbols and maybe trying to get some hinting in there for improved Windows rendering).
Updated
: i and l characters modified to disambiguate l from 1 and ZIP now includes FontForge source file.
[)amien
Xbox 360 misleading advertising?
I really enjoy my Xbox 360 – surprising considering I held the opinion my Xbox 1 was an ugly waste of space and that my PlayStation 2 satisfied my needs.
Microsoft have done many things right with this machine (Online, XNA, dashboard, media center, high-def). Sure, the hard disk should have been bigger especially now they are selling movies but my real complaint is that there STILL aren’t enough titles I want to play on it.
Imagine my surprise when flicking through this months PC Gamer (UK) magazine and finding an advert on page 59 with the words
“Feel the intense power of having way too many options to choose from. Jump in. Xbox 360″
Followed by a giant hand-print of hundreds of games. Wow, I must have missed something. There must be lots of games just waiting for me!
A quick scan through revealed a lot of dull EA Sports licences (FIFA, NHL, Madden, NBA blah blah blah) and a lot of duplicated titles.
A thought struck me – If I crossed out all the duplicate images what would we have left?
Something a little closer to reality. Click the image to zoom.
Update
Yes, dupes of Burnout, FEAR and Ultimate Alliance were missed. I’m not taking a new photo :p
[)amien