Latin vs Cyrillic

[krasnovpro]

How about making Cyrillic glyphs visually distinct from Latin glyphs? This would help distinguish between Cyrillic and Latin variables that are identical in spelling.

[fabrizioschiavi]

Could you make some examples to understand better, please?

[krasnovpro]

var foo = 10;
fоо *= 5;
console.log(foo);
-----
Uncaught ReferenceError: fоо is not defined
    <anonymous> debugger eval code:2

[wismill]

I do no think this is a good idea: confusable characters should be handled by your editor rather than the font. For instance VS Code implements this feature. There are plenty of confusable chars, so handling them should be preferably automatised to miss none.

[davidzchen]

There are numerous different code editors, and I think it infeasible to request all of them implement some kind of checker for confusable characters.

There are many precedents of fonts designed to make similar characters differentiable as an intentional decision to make the font accessible for individuals with visual impairments. Atkinson Hyperlegible by the Braille Institute is an excellent example.

While this context is less about readability in terms of accessibility concerns, the fact that it is so easy to mix up Latin and Cyrillic characters this way does greatly affect software engineering productivity, which this font is designed to improve on. Thus, if it is possible to differentiate between Latin and Cyrillic characters that look alike, it would be better to do so in the font.

@fabrizioschiavi what are your thoughts?

[fabrizioschiavi]

Thank you to all to letting me understand a bit more this issue.
It seems necessary to define new standars in the design of the glyphs for every language to avoid confusions in type design.
Probably in the future will be possible meanwhile I'll work on this issue with the hope to suggest these new standards

[TsavyPrince]

IMO a bad idea to invent new letterforms since there's no telling which letterforms are Latin or Cyrillic without already knowing.
Instead, a stylistic set which makes Cyrillic characters italic or bold would be easier to learn, and also easier to see at a glance.