Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-hated typeface

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/tabular-type-foundry/comic-code?tab=glyphs

by FabianBeiner • 7 years ago

284 136 7 years ago

js4ever• 7 years ago

Honest question, buying fonts is still a thing nowadays with all the free fonts everywhere? (google fonts and others)

nicoburns• 7 years ago

It definitely is. Some of the best fonts are still paid. And there are only so many high-quality free-fonts. That said, I haven't personally purchased a font (or worked for a company that purchased a font) for several years.

I can't imagine who would pay for this particular font :/

excalibur• 7 years ago

I can see Dinesh buying it just to make Gilfoyle's skin crawl.

gclaugus2• 7 years ago

I'd say yeah, I bought PragmataPro because it's a work of art and has great ligature support. Operator Mono is another popular choice.

exogeny• 7 years ago

I bought FF Kievit back in the day because it was the most beautiful thing I had ever saw. Now everything on the web is Proxima Nova and it is a boring, boring place.

quaffapint• 7 years ago

In terms of ligature support, as a free alternative there is FiraCode... https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

LukeBMM• 7 years ago

In addition to the other replies, there's more to a font than the shapes of the letters. "You get what you pay for" correlates even more strongly with things like hinting (internal instructions of how to try to align with pixel edges) than it does with the immediately visible appearance of the letterforms.

That's not a consideration for everyone, admittedly, but an incredibly important one for those who _do_ have to take it into account.

Causality1• 7 years ago

I'm also curious as to how this doesn't violate Microsoft's copyright on Comic Sans, since it's a derivative work being sold for profit.

jagger27• 7 years ago

From the about section: "Comic Code only takes inspiration from Comic Sans and was drawn entirely from scratch, in case you are wondering."

So that's effectively asking why Arial doesn't violate Helvetica's copyright.

SloopJon• 7 years ago

Case law on copyright for fonts is complicated, with fonts generally having less protection than other works. My impression is that Comic Code is no more derivative of Comic Sans than, say, Arial is of Helvetica.

dsr_2• 7 years ago

Font IP is special!

The names are trademarks, so you can't copy them exactly, but you can use suggestive alternates. Palatino => Palatable, for example. TeX Gyre Pagella is a very nice version.

The code is copyrighted, so you can't copy the code exactly. But -- you can rasterize a font, print it, scan it, vectorize the output, add your own hints, and now have a clean re-implementation. The shapes of the letters are not copyrightable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...

TheRealPomax• 7 years ago

Honest answer: that's a bit like asking "why buy games when there are so many free games available?"

Modern fonts are vastly more elaborate pieces of software than what people tend to think they are [1], and you get what you pay for. If you just need 56 letters, get a free font. If you need full Unicode Latin support, with proper kerning between each of the thousands of possible pairs, with ligature substitution for hundreds of tuples, not just for one language but several, with compositional repositioning for languages that require it, and alternate glyphs based on initial, median, final, or isolated letter form, and so on and so forth, then dollars will get you what free cannot.

Everyone can make a motivational jpg, but you need to pay a skilled digital artist to create a unique well composed new work. In the same vein, anyone can make a font, but you'll need to pay a skilled typographer (or foundry) if you want a well designed, feature rich typeface.

[1] https://pomax.github.io/CFF-glyphlet-fonts/

saidajigumi• 7 years ago

Seconded. The company I work for is currently commissioning a custom family of fonts from a major digital type foundry... and it's a vast (and expensive) undertaking. Consider potentially important features like support for[1]:

    font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums

For fonts with the support coded in, this variant means numbers in tables will line up in your font without outright switching to a monospace font. Beyond good glyph design, as the parent mentions, there's a lot of work to craft a professional modern font esp. the more of the Unicode language space it spans.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-varian...

LocalH• 7 years ago

The fact of modern vector fonts being software is what makes most fonts fall under copyright law in the first place in the US. Generally, absent actual software in the font file, typefaces aren't copyrightable at all. Pure bitmaps of typefaces are pretty much free for everyone to use. But if you use a protected vector font to generate those bitmaps, then they become infringing. Color of bits and all that.

This is also a US-centric comment. Other jurisdictions have differing rules to cover fonts and typefaces. In the US, however, it is fully legal to lawfully acquire a physical font specimen, scan that font, and do what you wish with it.

Caveat: IANAL

thebeefytaco• 7 years ago

Same reason why a lot of people don't use things like material design. People want their designs to look good and stand out from the crowd - not have the same cookie cutter site as everything else.

tiborsaas• 7 years ago

Usually when I stop to admire the typography on a certain site it's almost always a paid font.

pault3• 7 years ago

I started my career as a graphic designer, and I studied typography from an early age (my parents are both retired graphic designers and worked in the pre-digital era when designers really had to know their stuff). With the exception of a few well known typefaces (roboto, open sans, probably less than five in all) those free fonts suck. The kerning is terrible, there are usually no variants, they don't anti-alias well at different sizes, the international support is non-existent, etc. There is an absolutely insane amount of detail work that goes into designing a font and only the most OCD designers can pull it off, and only with an enormous amount of effort. If you spend 6 months to a year developing a font, you should be paid for it. Since I do notice these things I don't mind paying $100 for a font that ticks all of the above boxes. I stare at my IDE all day, and I wouldn't use a shitty color scheme, so I wouldn't use a shitty font on top of it.

empath752• 7 years ago

i would totally use this if it had nerdfont support and ligature support.

bin02• 7 years ago

You're in luck; you can patch your own! https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts#font-patcher

empath752• 7 years ago

yeah, but it wouldn't be in the same style.

jve• 7 years ago

How do you support ligatures for monospaced fonts?

lmilcin• 7 years ago

The same way as in any other font. https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

Someone• 7 years ago

You make sure all ligatures have widths that are integral multiples of the standard width.

If you’re strict, you make them the same width as the separate characters would be. If you’re less strict, you could, for example, have “⇒” or “½” be one character width, and not 2, respectively 3 (the latter probably would make you give up making a ligature for “1/2”)

vanderZwan2• 7 years ago

It seems to have ligatures, no? Fourth screenshot shows them off.

WorldMaker• 7 years ago

At the bottom of the glyph listings it does show glyphs for a number of the major programming ligatures. Doesn't seem to be a full set, in at least because I don't see the "Powerline" PUA glyphs, but a good set of the more common ones at least.

tosche11• 7 years ago

Hi, the designer of the font here. This version has ligatures but OFF by default (it's called dlig feature, discretionary ligatures). A version of the same font that has ligatures ON by default will be released soon. I don't know ho many code editors support manual activation of OpenType features, so I advise you get that later version if you really want to use it. Sorry for the confusion from not releasing them at the same time.

To share my view on ligatures, there is a danger of making it hard to count letters and I see a lot of designs feeling too creative with the possibility. In my design, I wanted to have ligatures that are more easily countable (not all cases though), and try to find balance between the two camps.

Twirrim• 7 years ago

I know people really hate Comic Sans, but it has some really useful properties.

One particularly useful property, especially in the education sector, is that dyslexics typically find it decidedly easier to read. Comic Sans uses distinct shapes for each character, e.g. no 'p' rotated to be 'q', and a variety of different sizes, all of which help make it easier for dyslexics.

AIGA article on the subject: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/sad-but-true-comic-sans-might-j...

From a bit by the British Dyslexic Association: https://bdatech.org/what-technology/typefaces-for-dyslexia/ Studies showed the following characteristics as being desired:

* Good ascenders and descenders, b, d, f, h, k, l, t, and all capitals; g, j, p, q, y. * b and d; p and q distinguished, not mirror images. * Different forms for capital I, lowercase l and digit 1. * Rounded g as in handwriting. Most liked rounded a, although perhaps some felt that it may be confused with o. * Letter-spacing, e.g. r, n together rn should not look like m, (‘modern’ may scan as, or sound like, ‘modem’.)

And their summary on Comic Sans MS: "It meets all dyslexic ‘likes’ except mirrored b and d."

mrob• 7 years ago

More recent research showed no benefit from a font designed for dyslexics:

"Dyslexie font does not benefit reading in children with or without dyslexia"

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11881-017-0154-...

iamnotacrook• 7 years ago

Use a different font then. I know dyslexic people who have had dyslexic fonts installed on their school computers because they found it amazing. If a report says it's no use, try a different dyslexic font...or read a different report!

coldtea• 7 years ago

Research which needs to be evaluated itself, could be biased, methodologically wrong, etc. In the end dyslectics konw waht tehy konw!

joosters2• 7 years ago

Oddly, this monospace version has a different style 'a', instead of the 'hand-written' original, which is unfortunate. I understood that one of the benefits of the original comic sans was that each letter was designed exactly as kids learn to write (e.g. no strange flourishes on the bottom of 'g' or the top of 'a'), making its legibility popular in classrooms.

magashna• 7 years ago

it looks like it has both

tosche11• 7 years ago

I originally had the so-called single-storey a by default, but it looked too confusing at coding text sizes. I even considered offering a "purist" version with that simpler a, but decided against it (too many options would confuse buyers). In my opinion, the simpler structure of a is better described as "writability" rather than legibility, and just because the new design does not follow the original does not mean it's bad. Whether it actually improved is a matter of opinion, but I believe in my decision in the context of coding.

anonoholic• 7 years ago

There's one other difference that makes the lower case "a" stand out. The other characters have a slight rightward lean(there's probably a technical term for that). The lower case "a" is the opposite, and it really stands out.

userbinator• 7 years ago

I was actually taught to write the "double-storey" 'a' (but not the 'g', although I later taught myself to do it in order to reduce ambiguity), so I suspect it could largely be something regional. I was also taught to write serifs and slash zeros, which felt unnecessary at first but it definitely helps readability, especially with letters like 1Il.

I've also received comments that my writing looks like an actual font, so I tried finding one on the font identification sites, but none of them are really a close match; a good description of it would be "calligraphic version of Times New Roman".

cameronbrown• 7 years ago

People often forget one of the reasons Comic Sans is so popular is because of these properties, and cyclically the reason it's so hated is because people can't help but see it everywhere.

stcredzero2• 7 years ago

An Irish fiddler of some note once quipped, "What's the difference between a great tune and a hackneyed tune? About 20 years."

(Tunes come back around. They get so worn out, and "institutionalized" people stop actually playing them for fun. Then, if they fade back into obscurity, another generation can "discover" them again.)

atoav3• 7 years ago

I think the Problem isn’t that it is everywhere, but it is a Font with a lot of character and people use it in all the inapropriate cases.

If you print a warning sign, the choice of Comic Sans (or Papyrus etc.) is incompatible with the message you wanna express. If you use Comic Sans for a childrens birthday invitation or well – a Comic – then your choice of font fits the message you are communicating.

Most Fonts that aren’t simple serif or sans-serif fonts add an additional message to the message you are conveying. Something neutral like an Helvetica/Arial/Calibri will not be perceived as conveying any additional context.

So fancy fonts essentially get into the way of your message if you don’t know what you are doing and this is the way Comic Sans got it’s reputation.

Additionally Comic Sans isn’t even that good of a Comic font to be honest..

bogwog• 7 years ago

one of the reasons Comic Sans is so popular is because of these properties

I doubt most people who use it do so because they know it will make it easier for people with dyslexia to read. My mother uses it all the time because she thinks its cute.

kazinator5• 7 years ago

Almost every use of the font is misuse. In all the supposedly correct uses for Comic Sans, the correct thing is to actually write by hand to create the true personal touch.

People hate the faked personal touch of a canned font that imitates writing which looks the same everywhere, letter for letter, no matter who produces the writing.

There is a middle ground: you can turn your own handwriting into a font.

karmakaze• 7 years ago

I can't wait to try them it out on a tech talk later this month.

Eric_WVGG• 7 years ago

Comic Sans is really good for what it’s designed for — 9pt dialogue in comic speech bubbles.

It's really really really terrible for anything else.

ebg133• 7 years ago

It's really really really terrible for anything else.

That's your opinion. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole

kazinator5• 7 years ago

Can't we design a font specifically for dyslexics without resorting to an ugly one that accidentally works, and that fixes b and d also?

dsr_2• 7 years ago

Sure. You'll just need to differentiate [i, j, I, l , 1], [o, O, 0, Q, G], [a, e], [E, 3], [S, 2, 5, Z], [A, 4, h], [B, 8], [L, 7, J], [6, 9, , [R, P, d, b, p, q, g, y] , [M, m, w, v, u, n, W, V], [X, x, k, K].

amarshall• 7 years ago

There have been a few (OpenDyslexic, Dyslexie, and others). However, to my knowledge no significant improvement has been shown over other, more common sans-serif fonts, despite several studies having been conducted.

pugworthy• 7 years ago

They don't hate it because of a direct, well thought out opinion they've made. They just like to jump on the hate bandwagon because it's the thing to do.

analog31• 7 years ago

Comic Sans, or something closely similar, seems to be a preferred font for chord symbols and other indications in sheet music. I encounter it a lot, playing jazz. Maybe there's something about readability under adverse conditions, e.g., under low light, at a distance, with lots of distractions.

And like kindergarten material, the chord symbols in good music charts are printed big.

davidgerard• 7 years ago

One particularly useful property, especially in the education sector, is that dyslexics typically find it decidedly easier to read.

If you can find me an actual study on this, you'll be the first. The claim appears to be a common myth: https://www.tes.com/news/does-comic-sans-help-dyslexic-learn...

cat199• 7 years ago

... awaiting OpenBSD wscons(4) soft font in 5.. 4.. 3..

protomyth• 7 years ago

Not open source, sadly.

linux2647• 7 years ago

I want to hate on it, but it’s actually like the perfect intersection of monospace and sans-serif; I find it incredibly readable.

stcredzero2• 7 years ago

I wonder if machine learning could produce human looking comic book lettering? It seems like something it would be good at. Also, I bet it could produce human sounding drumming as well.

davewongillies• 7 years ago

For years I've used Fantasque Sans Mono [0] which is Comic Sans inspired:

realization that at some point it looked like the mutant child of Comic Sans and Helvetica Neue.

[0] https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans

dreamer_soul• 7 years ago

That actually looks good haha

kbd• 7 years ago

It's great actually. I've used it for years as my text editor / terminal font.

Compare it to your font of choice in this handy app:

https://app.programmingfonts.org/#fantasque-sans

k6hkUZtLUM• 7 years ago

hilarious - this is the incarnation of a psuedo joke that will never die on the internet. remember the dog? this was his font. now it can be all your coding too LOL

PedroBatista• 7 years ago

Most of the "most over-hated" is just "hate" because it's cool.

If they see me hatin' maybe they think I'm a cultured techno-intelectual but a cool one.

creeble2• 7 years ago

Anybody know how to get this in vim?

creeble2• 7 years ago

Follows terminal font.

Down that Linux font rabbit hole, I guess.

Bonooru• 7 years ago

Edit your terminal's font settings. Without knowing more about the setup you use, I can't be more helpful.

microcolonel3• 7 years ago

I unironically love this typeface. As soon as my main monitors are HiDPI, I'm liable to switch. It helps not to take things too seriously.

blululu• 7 years ago

There was once an “Ask HN: What Font do you use for Programming?”. Most folks chose mono-space standards. One guy said “Comic Sans - to remind me to be humble.” I like that sentiment and I hope that he will enjoy this font.

tropo• 7 years ago

I'd like a Comic Sans without the intentional imperfections. Comic Sans puts a bit of wobble in the letters, as if being written by a careless person.

Alternately, with almost the same result, I'd like an Ariel with rounded tips.

What I'm wanting is nice geometrically clean letters done with a circle-tip pen.

jszymborski• 7 years ago

You might be interested in Arial Rounded [0], a similarly over-hated font

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/arial-...

ebg133• 7 years ago

I'd like a Comic Sans without the intentional imperfections

http://comicneue.com

pixelbath• 7 years ago

While I try not to be too pithy or snarky here on HN, the one thing sprung immediately to mind was:

Thanks, I hate it.

ezekg• 7 years ago

Thanks, I hate it.

wrp• 7 years ago

Several years ago, I experimented with a monospaced CS-like font. It has only the ASCII set, but it's free.

https://www.dafont.com/pointfree.font

qwtel• 7 years ago

You can turn the actual Comic Sans MS into a monospaced font using FongForge. I've made a short video about this back when [1]. You'll have to pause a lot, but the end result is pretty neat.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg7rWHsiAfQ

Raphmedia• 7 years ago

In a similar vein, I really like Comic Neue http://comicneue.com/

tosche11• 7 years ago

Hi, I'm the designer of Comic Code. I just wanted to join the discussion here, just because it looked fun. I know I released a Comic Sans variant, and I'm totally okay with the negative reaction; in fact it puts a big smile on my face. A world where everyone loves Comic Sans sounds wrong, doesn't it?.

I used to hate Comic Sans but it's still an interesting typeface that teaches you a lot about typography. Comic Sans can be a great choice depending on the context, and I want to share my personal favourite. When I went to a restaurant in Istanbul, they gave me menus in Turkish and English. The former was set in Comic Sans and the latter in Frutiger. The English menu looked so much like an office document and the Turkish one looked much more appetising (and I wished I could read Turkish). That was a genuine time when Comic Sans beat Frutiger.

Despite its quirky letterforms, it performs surprisingly well on screen. And I have seen people trying to use Comic Sans for coding too, most notably Simon Peyton Jones. Programming/coding is also a corner of typography where writing aspect plays a lot compared to others (e.g. user interface), so I found handwriting fonts quite fitting too. I think Comic Code also helps coding beginners who may be intimidated by the cold and mechanical visual of codes. I for one am easily bored while writing codes in regular sans serif. Coding environment is a very personal space and there is no need to look professional. I didn't need maximum clarity or efficiency in my coding typeface, but I wanted to have fun coding.

I think Comic Sans, for some people anyway, is something the internet told you to hate. I do see flaws in the typeface and I tried to improve it in my design, but I don't think you should be ashamed of liking Comic Sans. It's not even a bad typeface, and I have seen worse, many times. There is no bad typeface, only bad typography. (That's not strictly true but generally the case for Comic Sans)

Sorry for the long post. If you have suggestions (e.g. what glyphs and ligatures added), I'm all ears.

krisrm• 7 years ago

I actually... don't mind it. $15 is a bit much for me to pop on something I'm likely to spend some time giggling at (or maybe pranking some colleagues with... hmmm), but it really does look like the best of both worlds between comic sans and a monospace terminal font. Whatever that is. Anyways, well done!

tosche11• 7 years ago

Thanks! I have taken the idea very seriously and made sure it works as a workhorse coding font so that your purchase will not end up as a joke (it still may, that's up to your taste of course). There is Coding Essentials pack that gives you the usual four weights (Reg, Ita, Bol, BolIta) plus bonus weights.

microcolonel3• 7 years ago

Is there anywhere except MyFonts to buy a license? The website is incredibly frustrating, it takes upwards of 20 seconds to do anything, and it's not clear to me how I can actually check out.

I still can't get the checkout page to actually appear, it just waits forever (but there's no loading spinner, so I guess it's some huge script running on every page load?)

P.S. It's nice to see a full set of basic Cyrillic and Hellenic characters.

tosche11• 7 years ago

Thanks, in my humble opinion, the Cyrillic and Greek are actually better in Comic Code despite being monospaced. Unfortunately I am not allowed to sell the fonts elsewhere, so you may want to send a feedback to the website. I am sorry for the inconvenience.

pault3• 7 years ago

I was expecting to laugh at how ugly it is, but it actually looks really nice! I bought the essentials pack to replace operator mono, which I've become bored with. Good job!

Edit: It looks really great with a theme that supports italics: https://imgur.com/a/VYH1J8s

tosche11• 7 years ago

Thanks! That capital T looks kinda broken in this screenshot though. What OS and editor are you using, and what font size?

tracker1• 7 years ago

Looks like a great font... curious if you might be willing to add the missing glyphs for CP437 (mostly missing block and line drawing characters)... would love to use this as a web terminal font option.

tosche11• 7 years ago

Thanks, I can do that.

tekknik• 7 years ago

I would probably actually use this, but that price is really high for what this is. $100 for the full family? really?

tosche11• 7 years ago

I know the typeface looks childish, but that does not mean it was made poorly; I spent a lot of time making this typeface actually capable of serious business. Also you can easily find coding typefaces with higher price but with fewer characters and sometimes no italics. Besides, there is a smaller pack called Coding Essentials, so you do not need to buy the whole family (that wouldn't be so useful for coding anyway).

codesushi42• 7 years ago

Why is Comic Sans so reviled? Is it because it is one of the few fonts you are able to name?

It's like the mainstream view that ET is the worst game of all time. It is bad, yes, but not even close to the worst game of all time. Not even the worst mainstream game of all time.

Stop font is far worse than Comic Sans, and that garbage was showing up all the time in the 90s well into the 2000s.

https://fanart.tv/fanart/movies/5491/hdmovielogo/battlefield...

ben509• 7 years ago

Is it because it is one of the few fonts you are able to name?

More that people can name it and identify it. Plenty of people know what Arial is, and I'd imagine designers hate it far more, but most people can't distinguish it from Helvetica.

Stop font is far worse than Comic Sans

Yeah, if the original San Francisco[1] had been made a TrueType font and become popular, it would be equally reviled.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(decorative_type...

mehrdadn• 7 years ago

Why is Comic Sans so reviled?

This site sort of explains it (click to scroll): http://comicsanscriminal.com/

jonrx• 7 years ago

I wish that MyFonts has a better way to "test-drive" the font. When writing some small snippets of code, I wansn't exactly sure if it would work well.

Ended up purchasing it, and I must say, it's really fun to use! I find that it makes it easier to go from "focus mode" to "overview mode": it's very readable, but since it looks less blocky than most monospace fonts, I find it easier to navigate larger blocks of code.

I might not use it all the time, but this will keep me smiling for a while!

d--b• 7 years ago

This font is way better than comic sans. I mean look at the m

seltzered_• 7 years ago

FWIW, I actually use the 'chalkboard' (apple's version of comic-sans) in my nvAlt (note-taking) app. Makes the feel a bit.

On a different note, it'd be interesting to pair this with a friendlier color scheme: https://twitter.com/lovemecomputer_/status/10903670151419985...

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=soft-aes...

craigds• 7 years ago

I've never bought a font before. These seem crazy expensive. Is this kind of pricing normal?

I'd expect to pay maybe a dollar or two for a font; it really doesn't seem like it would provide enough value to be worth more than that.

tosche11• 7 years ago

I totally understand that it seems expensive especially if you haven't bought fonts before. Designers are more willing to pay for fonts since fonts are their tools and money maker, but most people do not make a money's worth out of font purchase. If you are in an environment where you think font choices can improve your productivity, I do recommend you consider buying one. To talk about our side, serious typeface design requires years of experience, and people who buy fonts are much smaller in number, compared to film and music, which is also why fonts seem pricy. Look at MyFonts and you will see Comic Code is actually on the cheaper side. There are sometimes good fonts made open source, but the principle that we need to get paid still applies; for those projects, it's just that they were paid by other companies like Mozilla and Google, not users.

Here is an open source option of monospaced Comic Sans, which seems to be a passion project rather than a paid one. It's a single weight with very small character count. I mean no harm to her project, but it does make a case for what you get for free vs money. https://github.com/shannpersand/comic-shanns

awinter-py• 7 years ago

not to be confused with the comics code authority, the censorship body governing comics for part of the 20th century

hnbroseph• 7 years ago

wow. someone really took comic sans and started charging $100 for it.

Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-hated typeface

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