Rework on monospace: Slashed zero and real monospace

[ekaitz-zarraga]

Hi,

I changed the fonts to have slashedzero by default instead of the standard zero and I forced the fonts to be detected as monospaced.

Best,
Ekaitz

[ekaitz-zarraga]

Pull request is not valid yet because it doesn't follow the contribution rules but consider it a suggestion to the font as I'm unable to install fontlab and I don't have any way to follow the instructions.

It should result in a font that:

1. Is detected as Monospace in linux system. This means every glyph should have the same width. I made this changing every glyph's width to 1300, which is the width that standard characters have. Looks like some others have not a fixed width.

2. It would be nice to use a slashed zero as default, but this is a design detail that you might disagree with.

I'll leave this PR open even it's not valid to use it as a reference.

[hardyoyo]

This is a great PR. I've been running b612 as my main IDE/editor font for well over a year, and only today realized that the zero is completely the same as the O... I can't believe I never noticed, and glad it hasn't bit me yet. I'm going to switch over to the @ekaitz-zarraga fork, for now, but I really think you should merge this pull request. It looks like it's failing a check for a CLA?

[ekaitz-zarraga]

@hardyoyo since the release they didn't really pay attention to any request, that's why I started the fork... It's sad, but at least we have something.
Thanks for the nice words!

[acbits]

This is a great PR. I've been running b612 as my main IDE/editor font for well over a year, and only today realized that the zero is completely the same as the O... I can't believe I never noticed, and glad it hasn't bit me yet. I'm going to switch over to the @ekaitz-zarraga fork, for now, but I really think you should merge this pull request. It looks like it's failing a check for a CLA?

I am not sure how you tolerated it that long :-) I tried it on Linux at 69ppi(my monitor) and I see terrible color fringing. This could be a freetype issue/limitation.

After trying over 50 programming fonts, Consolas remains the best hinted font IMHO. Of course, if you have a monitor with ~ 150ppi, then it is a moot point. You could use any font.

[yungthai]

@ekaitz-zarraga Are you willing to share your fontforge project files? I am just wondering how much effort is required to continue your work to centre the punctuation characters as per #31. It's a very legible font for embedded instrumentation UI, particularly the numbers.

There is another fork by @carlosedp that has dotted-zero and slashed-zero but that uses fontlab. (The screenshots show the punctuation characters are still left aligned).

[ekaitz-zarraga]

@yungthai Fontforge can manipulate the ttfs directly, and that's what I did. I didn't use any project files.
We should convert convert this project or something and start maintaining it on our own because this is unmaintained.

tl;dr; if you are doing just a couple of changes, the ttf should be enough. If you plan to fork and maintain, count me in.

[carlosedp]

All project files are available in my fork... I've used fontlab since it's free and works on Mac. It's by first try to edit fonts.
I've also added ligatures from Firacode and Nerdfonts glyphs.

I'm willing to look into them and center the punctuation if that's not too much work.

[carlosedp]

There it goes... I'll upload them soon to my repo.

[carlosedp]

Updated fonts have been updated in https://github.com/carlosedp/b612/tree/master/fonts

[yungthai]

Updated fonts have been updated in https://github.com/carlosedp/b612/tree/master/fonts

Thank you both for your prompt response.

I tried the updated fonts but Linux Mint (and partially Windows 10) have problems with the OpenType fonts (.otf) and ligature versions.

tldr; Are you able generate TrueType .ttf version without too much effort?

Linux MInt appears to have ignored those files:

yung@machine:/usr/share/fonts/opentype/B612$ ls
B612MonoLigaNerdFont-BoldIta.otf  B612MonoLigaNerdFont-Italic.otf   B612Mono-Regular.otf
B612MonoLigaNerdFont-Bold.otf     B612MonoLigaNerdFont-Regular.otf  B612-Regular.otf

$ sudo fc-cache -rv | rg B612
/usr/share/fonts/opentype/B612: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs

Under a Windows 10 VM, dragging the .otf file into the fonts folder produce this warning:

Despite the Windows warning it resulted in the installation of the original B612 fonts under the b612/fonts /Orig directory but failed to install the latest ligature versions. Notepad screenshot with original B612 Mono font:

A font Inspector such as https://opentype.js.org/font-inspector.html
reported Error: Unsupported OpenType signature

[yungthai]

I generated the .ttf version using FontLab. Thanks to @carlosedp for having done most of the work centring the punctuation characters.

No issues with the installation of those 4 .ttf fonts in Linux and Windows.

EDIT:

Having experimented further with FontLab (but with zero experience with fonts):

• As per the PR author's solution: Every glyph needs to be set to the same width (1300). (Otherwise, Terminal apps that expect a monospace font won't even list the B612 mono font).

• Perhaps all punctuation characters need to be centered? Or, perhaps just a few critical ones were not set correctly.
  E.g. single quotes ', ! and backticks ` look odd when left justified. (Not sure if FontLab has a quick action to make Left & Right side bearings equal for all glyphs).

Other than that, I'll go through a few more iterations.

I am willing to assist in maintain this fork. (Perhaps Airbus can sponsor by means of a few FontLab licences, as it's much easier to use compared to FontForge).