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ipfs-shipyard / ipfs-css

The single-purpose css class names and font-face config to IPFS up your UI.
MIT License
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Fonts: Il| O0 #6

Closed nothingismagick closed 4 years ago

nothingismagick commented 6 years ago

Just to throw some oil on the smoking embers of the typography battlefield, it should be clear that many sans-serif fonts do not make an OBVIOUS differentiation between the I, the l and the |. In normal usage, native speakers shouldn't have a problem understanding that Illustration is the capitalised letter after "H" and before "J" and it is followed by the lower-case letter "L" twice.

I took a look at the IPFS_brandbook.pdf - and it suggested using Monserrat with Verdana as a fallback. Here in this repo, there is the introduction of Inter-UI. Of those three fonts, only Verdana distinguishes perfectly between I, the l and the |. Inter-UI is a total fail, because the I and the l are absolutely entirely indistinguishable.

This is moot for normal hashes, because adopting base58 encoding solves the visual problem. Nevertheless, I bring this up as a font-fetishist because the reason we have different letters is, as with words, they help us build meaning. I would love to have a discussion here and think about ways forward. I see three:

  1. Stick with the choices made. (status-quo)
  2. Find better solutions. (discussion)
  3. Modify an existing font. (hard work)
jessicaschilling commented 4 years ago

Closing this issue for now for two reasons: