Archive for the 'Fonts' category

14
Apr

More screen-shots of Envy Code R preview #7

By Damien Guard Categories: Development and Fonts Tags: , .

Work on my Envy Code R programming font has resumed and I've spent hours playing with the hinting process to ensure it looks good at sizes above and below 10 point:

Screen-shot of Envy Code R PR7 without smoothing on WindowsScreen-shot of Envy Code R PR7 with standard smoothing on WindowsScreen-shot of Envy Code R PR7 with ClearType on Windows

These look great - even more so when you consider there are no embedded bitmaps and very few delta hints.

There is still a lot of work to do - all the foreign characters, symbols and box-drawing characters (another 600 glyphs) require hinting and I should test it on the Mac, Java and Flash font rendering engines to make sure there are no show-stoppers there.

Preview 7 will consist of of just a plain style regular and bold because I need to get this out - it's been too long since the last release. Preview 8 will add back italics and the Visual Studio italics-as-bold hack shortly afterwards.

Check out Talios's shots using Java/Linux and Eddy Young's shots in NetBeans.

[)amien

12 Comments
03
Dec

Getting the hint (Where is Envy Code R?)

By Damien Guard Categories: Fonts Tags: , , , .

I know, I said there would be a good chance that the next version of Envy Code R would be out this weekend but the annoying sizing, thickness and cropping issues that came up at some sizes above and below the optimum 10 point were really annoying me.

Many articles later, some playing around with Microsoft Visual TrueType and much frustration and experimentation later I think I'm on the right path.

Here is how Envy Code R is looking on Windows right now with standard font smoothing.

Envy Code R hinted on Windows with standard font smoothing at various sizes.

ClearType doesn't look as good and I'm still learning the black art and the implications of each type of hinting instruction.

Strangely, these hints seem to be ignored on the Mac which is still rendering everything a little too thick especially on curves. Perhaps that is why so many developers create a Mac-specific version?

Once I'm happy with how the regular version works I'll put it online for download and then whip the bold and italic variants in to shape and any feedback into regular for the proper 0.7 release.

[)amien

5 Comments
27
Nov

Envy Code R coding font v0.7 preview

By Damien Guard Categories: Fonts Tags: , , .

Envy Code R font preview #7 highlighting some of the characters in a chart.The next version of my Envy Code R font especially designed for programming (monospaced, easily distinguishable characters) is nearing completion and represents a very response-driven update to feedback, specifically:

  • ReadOnly, Greg Jandl: Comma clarified and change applied to full quotation marks, semi-colons and various accented letters
  • Adrian Bool, Greg Jandl: The slash on the zero has been redrawn to be less heavy
  • jxp: The Euro symbol has been redrawn from scratch
  • Aristotle Pagaltzis: Braces are more curvy and a full set of box-drawing characters have been added
  • IRC: Hash sign with longer legs

I have also fleshed out a number of additional symbols and accented letters that has seen the number of code pages supported increase to 12 pages and made a large number of tweaks to the italic version which was a last-minute addition to 0.6 (PR6) and had a number of errors especially round the accented letters.

Of course what you really want to know is how the new version looks in Visual Studio with that lovely Humane theme of mine:

Envy Code R font at 10 point in Visual Studio 2008 with my Humane theme.

There is still some work to do on the sizes above and below 10 point (again) as well as fleshing out a few more symbols, letters and italicising additional letters such as a curly k and rounder e which I hope will be finished towards the end of this week.

The observant followers may have noticed a pixel has been shaved off the vertical height which now brings it in line with the bitmapped Envy Code B coding font. I had intended on making the change for some time and the box characters practically demanded it to ensure the centres were whole pixels and not off-centre but some people may not like it...

[)amien

11 Comments
14
Nov

Droid font family courtesy of Google & Ascender

By Damien Guard Categories: Fonts Tags: , , .

Google's Android project, an open platform for mobile devices, has been hitting the news a lot in the last couple of days with it's open APIs, Java-based development platform and optimized virtual machine.

One thing not too many people have yet been raving over is the lovely set of typefaces from Ascender Fonts known as the Droid family.

Hidden away into the downloadable SDK's emulator is system.img which contains various binary files including these new fonts. Being that the image is almost certainly in Linux ext format and I found no easy way of mounting it in Mac OS X or Windows I was rather pleased when I stumbled upon Beeno's page of the extracted files.

I have already covered Droid Sans Mono with an eye for using it for programming but thought it would be worth showing the other members of the family although I haven't drawn direct comparisons with the Mac and Windows supplied fonts as I did with Red Hat's Liberation fonts.

The Droid fonts in Windows XP via WordPad:

Screen shot of the Droid fonts in Windows XP via WordPad.

The Droid fonts in Mac OS X 10.5 via TextEdit:

Screen shot of the Droid fonts in Mac OS X 10.5 via TextEdit.

Download Droid Font Family (ZIP of TTF) (1.8 MB)

[)amien

30 Comments
14
Nov

Droid Sans Mono great coding font

By Damien Guard Categories: Fonts Tags: , , .

Google's Android project, an open platform for mobile devices, has been hitting the news a lot in the last couple of days with it's open APIs, Java-based development platform and optimized virtual machine which includes the lovely set of typefaces from Ascender Fonts known as the Droid family.

Check out previous coverage of the well-known and lesser-known coding fonts.

There are a number of Droid fonts including Droid Sans and Droid Serif but of particular interest for developers is the Droid Sans Mono font that looks great in Visual Studio not only at my favourite 10 point... but from 7 point upwards with either ClearType or standard font smoothing although some might find the fact it smooths at all sizes a little soft (or Mac-like).

Here it is at 9 point with Rob Conery's Vibrant Ink 2 theme:
Screen shot of Droid Sans Mono at 9 point with Vibrant Ink 2 theme in Visual Studio

Here it is at 11 point with my Humane theme:
Screen shot of Droid Sans Mono at 11 point with Humae theme in Visual Studio

And hereis 12 point in Xcode on the Mac:
Screen shot of Droid Sans Mono at 12 point in Xcode on the Mac

The only issues are:

  • the lack of a bold weight or italic variant which limits the syntax highlighting options
  • the 0 is currently not slashed (there could be some other indistinguishable character pairs)

Being that the Droid family is Apache licensed no doubt somebody will fill that gap (okay, okay, I'll give it a shot when I get some time;-)

Download Droid Sans Mono (TrueType TTF) (47 KB)

Try my free scalable coding font Envy Code R (shown below) with Visual Studio italic support, has a bold variant and distinguishable pairs 0O etc:

Envy Code R font at 10 pt with italics in Visual Studio using Humane theme.

[)amien

45 Comments
05
Nov

Professional quality free fonts*

By Damien Guard Categories: Fonts Tags: .

FontShop free

Every month FontShop make a font available for free for a limited time so grab it while you can. The best option is to join their monthly newsletter so you don't miss one!

Ralph Levien

Ralph is behind the excellent Inconsolata font which is great for printing code or if you like large programming fonts. He also has a number of classical typefaces including the great ATF Century Catalogue, Museum Caps, LeBe, ATF Bodoni and ATF Franklin Gothic.

Microsoft OpenType Font Pack

A bunch of licenced fonts available from Ascender Corporation including the stylish Kooteny and sharp Miramonte.

Jos Buivenga

Sample of Fertigo font.Jos has produced a number of beautiful typefaces free to download. I particularly like the subtle quirks of Delicious and the flowing curves of Fertigo (sample shown_ but also check out some of the others available too.

MgOpen

These fonts were previously commercial and designed for the Greek alphabet and the four fonts available - Canonica, Cosmetica, Modata, Moderna - look great in the Latin alphabet too.

Die Gestalten

A number of experimental fonts for download but not redistribution including the rather delicious Engel Light ltd.

COM4t

These people produce a number of great free fonts including the elegant COM4t Fine Regular and Quilline Script Thin.

If you love typography then check out the ILoveTypography blog for news on great typefaces and tips on designing your own font.

[)amien
* some restrictions apply to usage on some of the fonts, check the licences for details.

0 Comments
13
Oct

Older pixel fonts back online

By Damien Guard Categories: Fonts Tags: , .

Some of my older bitmap "pixel" font files are now available again, they are:

  • Envy Code A - sizes from 7pt-12pt in both regular and bold weights
    Envy Code A font at 7pt regular
  • Envy Code B - sizes from 9pt-10pt in regular, bold, italic and bold italic. (was the basis for Envy Code R)
    Envy Code B font at 9pt regular
  • PalmOS - a Window port of the PalmOS system font recreated from screenshots.
    PalmOS font at 8pt regular

I also have about 20 pixel fonts from my Spectrum days that I am intending on bringing across to Windows FON format in the near future.

[)amien

1 Comment
09
Oct

Envy Code R Jeff Atwood scheme

By Damien Guard Categories: Fonts Tags: , , .

Jeff "Coding Horror" Atwood published a nice round-up of coding fonts he's been looking at lately in Visual Studio with his own colour scheme.

For reasons best known to Jeff he went with 11 point this time (previously his scheme was published with 10 point) and used the older preview of Envy Code R neglecting to mention the italic-as-bold variant to get round the no-italics limitation of Visual Studio's highlighting syntax editor.

So here is the latest version, at the optimal 10 point utilising the italic variant and Jeff's own colour scheme modified to show comments in 'bold':

Envy Code R font, Jeff Atwood style.

Personally I am using a tweaked version of Thomas Restrepo's dark theme at work that currently looks like:

Envy Code R font, Dark style

[)amien

8 Comments
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