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arrowtype / recursive

Recursive Mono & Sans is a variable font family for code & UI
https://recursive.design
SIL Open Font License 1.1
3.16k stars 51 forks source link

Design request: moderate size of quote marks in proportional styles #334

Open shinze opened 4 years ago

shinze commented 4 years ago

The apostrophe seems huge compared to the ´of é and from a different font design.

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Here is what the same words are looking like with IBM Plex font for illustration.

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arrowtype commented 4 years ago

Thanks for noticing! I agree that Recursive is much nicer. 🙃

In more seriousness, punctuation marks in Recursive are intentionally extra-large because the font is foremost a font made for code at sizes around 10–16px. When it's monospaced, bigger punctuation better fills available space to improve spacing. It's even nicer in things like lists, where big commas do a better job of keeping items visually separated.

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The utility of large punctuation is more significant in the Mono styles of Recursive, and I have considered reducing the size of some punctuation in Sans styles. But, honestly, I think that even in text, it's mostly nicer to have large punctuation than punctuation that is too small. There is also the detail that the font has been spaced and kerned with the current sizing, so it require quite a lot of time to change, for benefits that I am not currently convinced of.

However, it is something that I'll keep in mind, and may revisit someday.

Thanks for caring and for filing the suggestion! I hope you are able to get some good use out of Recursive. :) If the punctuation really bugs you, it is an OFL-licensed font, so you are totally free to edit it / change it however you like to suit your purposes. Cheers!

raphaelbastide commented 3 years ago

@arrowtype Are you saying this design choice (to keep bolder punctuations) inherits from the monospace nature of the font, even in the proportional version? I am currently setting a workhorse text with "MONO" 0, "CASL" 0, "wght" 370, "slnt" 0, "CRSV" 0.5 and I notice the gray sometimes jumps because of the weight of ’. To be honest I don’t know yet if I like it or not, but I was curious why you choose that direction.

Screenshot_2021-04-23_11-41-01

arrowtype commented 3 years ago

Yes, it was a conscious decision to keep larger-than-usual punctuation in the sans styles. I think a teacher of mine once said something like, "no one ever died because there was too obvious a difference between a period and a comma, but I bet the reverse is true."

However, you make a good case that perhaps the quote marks are a little too intense in the Sans styles. I will consider making them match the text color more closely in a future release.

raphaelbastide commented 3 years ago

Great teacher quote!

sipec commented 3 years ago

I actually like it as it is because I use the proportional version of Recursive for programming