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googlefonts / spacemono

Original monospace display typeface family
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Space+Mono
SIL Open Font License 1.1
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Flawed "M" and "W" in GF Space Mono #1

Open hpapazian opened 7 years ago

hpapazian commented 7 years ago

The "M" and "W" glyphs in GF Space Mono are designed in a way as to overly disrupt texture, especially when occurring in close sequence (such as in an alphabetized list).

gf_space_mono_flawed-m The above image is from the –otherwise quite impressive– official specimen book.

Although monospace fonts do have to make severe compromises in various dimensions including density, this particular compromise is extreme and unnecessary, hence technically inexplicable. Note for example how the much more challenging lowercase "m" is handled well.

It's relatively painless to correct this issue by not forcing the middle diagonals of the "M" and "W" to reach the baseline/capline respectively. A potential small loss in the "spirit of the design" to avoid severe disruption of texture would constitute a much-needed trade-off.

alexeiva commented 7 years ago

Bokmål is missing an å ;)

Interesting observation, @hpapazian I personally don't mind the darkness in monospaced fonts. As long as it is repeated in other 'wide' characters. I have worked with fonts with no optical correction as a design concept, and it made sense.

I see that the treatment in upper and lower-case m's can be classified as two different approaches. But w isn't compensated in a similar fashion, which makes the diagonals consistent across the font. I am not sure if lightening the M, and other diagonals would be a better solution.

hpapazian commented 7 years ago

The darkness is not judiciously distributed; the font as a whole is nicely balanced in color... except for the "M" and "W". The lc "m" is indeed solved in a way that cannot directly inform improvement in those two characters; but Space Mono's "m" very much involves good optical correction, unlike in the "M" and "W".

I mentioned above a straight-forward fix for the "M" and "W"; not involving lightening the diagonals (which would probably backfire) but simply not forcing their diagonals to reach all the way to the bounds.

davelab6 commented 7 years ago

@hpapazian I spoke to the Colophon team and this will be resolved by adding a stylistic alternate with higher joins

hpapazian commented 7 years ago

Very encouraging! Thanks to all.

hpapazian commented 1 year ago

So was the stylistic alternate mentioned above ever added?