Help with this experiment!

[cormullion]

Thanks for your interest in this experiment!

Wouldn't it be great if your code ran perfectly on everybody's machine, no matter what? I wish... 😃 So, I'm interested in seeing how different this font 'code' runs on various machines. So, if you have a spare minute, you could upload a picture of JuliaMono-Regular running on your setup.

I suggest opening up a file such as /julia/base/ntuple.jl for editing in your usual favourite coding environment, and post it with a few details about how old your machine is, which OS, monitor resolution, and so on. I might be able to gather from these where best to spend time trying to improve it.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017):

Thanks!

[simeonschaub]

Linux, with FullHD display. Running vim inside the Kitty terminal. JuliaMono-Medium at 10pt, without any sub-pixel antialiasing:

At 10 pt some of the characters look like they're bouncing around a bit, as described in #3, but I am still very much enjoying this font and have set it as the default for my terminal. Awesome work!

[kalmarek]

ArchLinux, 1440p, font smoothing

[cormullion]

Thanks - results are disappointing, there's quite a difference between the various platforms, which I didn't really anticipate. I'll probably switch from CFF to TTF internally, although that will make the files bigger...

@simeonschaub I appreciate your testing! :)

[cormullion]

MacbBook Pro 2012 running Ubuntu, 1280x800, antialias, slight autohinting

you can see why I was optimistic about quality - I thought that if this was 2012 quality it would be better in 2020...

[hearnsj]

Dell LAtitude 5400 laptop. Display is Philips 25 inch monitor 2560x1440
Editor is Atom 1.50.0-beta0
Font should be JuliaMono at 17 points - apologies if this is FiraCode - I did try to configure it cirrectly

[cormullion]

@hearnsj Thanks - looks better at 17point... :) My eyes are not compatible with 10point text...

[xukai92]

• VS Code
• 12pt
• macOS 10.15.5
• 1920 x 1200

[cormullion]

@xukai92 Thanks! Seems fairly accurate rendering if a little fuzzier...

[xukai92]

I ended up using 13pt instead which seems to be better.

[cormullion]

Yes, I like larger sizes... :) Apple don't do font-hinting, so I suspect it won't get any better for Mac users. There's the Font smoothing option:

and that's about it. Is it a new Mac?

[xukai92]

It's a MacBook Pro 2018. My font smoothing is turned on already

[nicolamos]

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), 2560 x 1600.
Editor is Atom 1.49.0 with 12pt font.

[cormullion]

@myrddin89 Thanks - one of the best environments for this!

[xukai92]

The screenshot from @myrddin89 looks much smoother than mine. What makes the difference here?

[cormullion]

@xukai92 I noticed your image was a little fuzzier... do you have a Retina display?

[nicolamos]

It well may be the Retina resolution, I usually notice the difference, especially after a while I don’t use a non Retina monitor.

[xukai92]

Just tried it on the Retina display rather than my 1900x1200 external monitor - it indeed looks better:

Even this screenshot on my external monitor looks less fuzzier than the actual rendered version ...?

[simeonschaub]

Now looks great on v0.004!

[ckoe-bccms]

Hello,

with v0.004 on ubuntu 16.04, screen is samsung 24" 1920x1080, Xft.dpi: 92, Xft.antialias: true, Xft.hinting: true, Xft.hintstyle: hintsnone.
I usually first open files in vim in an xterm (using my default terminal font) and eventually remember to switch to gvim later. So two screenshots are attached, one with vim in xterm (xterm -fa "JuliaMono" -fs 12) and one in gvim (Regular, 12pt).

Probably I am not your typical user :-) Hope this helps anyway and thank you for the interesting project !

[cormullion]

@ckoe-bccms Thanks very much! It doesn't look too bad... 🤣

I think if I was using this setup, I'd choose the alternate designs for /a and /g... :) I know how to do this in Atom and VS-Code, and Kitty, but not in any other terminal app... 😕

[MasonProtter]

Here is julia/base/ntuple.jl using emacs in Manjaro Linux and KDE Plasma. The monitor is a BenQ GW2765HT 27.0" 2560x1440 Monitor.

and here's some REPL tomfoolery:

[cormullion]

@MasonProtter Thanks - that's looking good! What terminal is it? I see you're not getting the contextual alternates by default. (eg -> to →).

[MasonProtter]

@MasonProtter Thanks - that's looking good! What terminal is it? I see you're not getting the contextual alternates by default. (eg -> to →).

Hi @cormullion , that wasn't a terminal it was the emacs GUI and getting ligature support in the emacs GUI is possible, but I never learned how to do it. Here's evidence that the ligatures are working properly in Konsole.

[cormullion]

@MasonProtter Probably a few lines of LISP should do the trick.. :)

[cormullion]

@apparluk Thanks - I'm really looking to see what I can't see from my computer - namely how it looks on other people's.

[DimitarVanguelov]

OS: Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia x86_64
Host: Aspire E5-575 V1.25
Resolution: 1920x1080
Editor: VS Code
Font Size: 14

[cormullion]

@EarthGoddessDude Thanks - that looks pretty acceptable, VS-Code does a good job I think.

@apparluk Thanks - considering the low resolution that's working quite well. But this won't be the best font for this environment... 😥

[nico202]

@MasonProtter Hi! In emacs (on gnu/linux) I could enable ligatures on julia mono with code found for fira font (the one using set-char-table-range worked). (but emacs started freezing on certain buffers)

However, in general, my emacs window is rendering juliamono too bold (compared to your screenshot/rendering in other programs). How did you set it? With

(set-frame-font "JuliaMono 8")

this is the result

[cormullion]

No idea about emacs, but there's a Light version of the font. But much depends on the quality of the environment you have...

[nico202]

The problem is that fc-match select the medium variant instead of the regular:

fc-match -v juliamono-20:weight=normal |grep file:
        file: "/home/nixo/.guix-profile/share/fonts/truetype/JuliaMono-Medium.ttf"(w)

[cormullion]

Errr... I have only five minutes of emacs experience, so I can't really help. A wild suggestion is to delete all the weights you don't need, leave just the one, and see if you can persuade your system to reluctantly use the only one that matches... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[nico202]

I'm not 100% sure, but opening the JuliaMono-Medium with fontforge, element -> fontinfo -> ttf names -> styles (subfamily) shows Regular. Shouldn't it be "Medium"?

[nico202]

Hack Bold -> Bold. Hack Regular -> Regular, JuliaMono Regular -> Regular...

[cormullion]

FontForge says Regular whatever you load:

When created, the family is "JuliaMono".

... there's no other box to type stuff.

Probably, when you open a single font in FontForge, it has no idea whether that one font is part of a family. Whereas, when created, the various instances are created as a family - they have to be, since they're interpolated masters called "Light", "Regular", "Medium", and so on.

[nico202]

Are you sure it's the same for other fonts, and not only for juliamono?
Here's what I get with Hack Bold:

In your second screenshot, maybe it should be a custom parameter?

[cormullion]

Who knows ... it works everywhere else... 🤷

[nico202]

Well yes, but fc-cache is from fontconfig, and it returns the wrong font. If manually setting the weight does works, that does not mean that the subfamily is correct.
In emacs, for example, I can set the right subfamily (i.e.: using the regular variant) by specifying the weight to book. But if it automatically sets the wrong one, maybe it's something related to the font itself (in hack is specified here: https://github.com/source-foundry/Hack/blob/1eddf943125a3f06945b86dbb7f55704a517331c/source/Hack-Regular.ufo/fontinfo.plist#L94).

But I do not know enough about fonts, maybe someone else.
By the way, will you share the sources you use to build TTFs?

Thanks!

[cormullion]

Sadly I don't really have the resources or skills to troubleshoot Linux or Windows issues, to be honest, and this little experiment designed for a 10 minute JuliaCon presentation probably won't satisfy everyone's needs.

Hack's a fine font, developed with open source tools by folks who know what they're doing - you may prefer to stick with them. 😂

[nico202]

But I like JuliaMono, and with the workaround (weight=book) is working fine, I just wanted to fix this. But it might be my setup broken as well.

(By the way, the patch I submitted to the guix repository adding JuliaMono has been merged: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/44410)