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microsoft / cascadia-code

This is a fun, new monospaced font that includes programming ligatures and is designed to enhance the modern look and feel of the Windows Terminal.
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The '~' glyph it's not visually balanced #237

Closed ohkimur closed 4 years ago

ohkimur commented 4 years ago

Description of the new feature/enhancement

The '~' glyph it's not visually balanced. Sometimes when I use it in programming it can be confusing and not visually pleasing. It looks like it's rotated (in the wrong direction) because the geometric weight center isn't horizontally centered. I find this to be especially true when I use this glyph in the context of a file path.

This image shows a context where the problem can be identified:

image

I think this is happening because some parts of the glyph are not horizontally centered. The image below shows a more articulate view of the issue:

image

OBS: The section of the glyph from the 1 area is bigger than the section of the glyph from the 2 area. This makes the glyph to look unbalanced.

Proposed technical implementation details

I think that if the glyph will be redesigned to be more even horizontally it will look better and it will not create unbalanced perception of the visual information. Here is an image with the same version of the glyph, but rotated a little bit (15deg):

image

OBS: The rotated version is not perfect, but it can help to identify the issue.

madig commented 4 years ago

I have found that when rotating tildes like in your proposal, they sometimes are less distinguishable at smaller sizes. The current one sticks out, which I find helpful here and there.

ohkimur commented 4 years ago

@madig you might be right about the fact that at smaller sizes a simple rotation can make it less distinguishable. My proposal is not to rotate it, but to make it horizontally even. Rotating it's just a very simple way of achieving that horizontal balance.

OBS: I think the horizontal balance can be achieved by other techniques than just a simple rotation. In fact a simple rotation it's not necessarily in harmony with the design 'personality' of the typeface.

Fallyx commented 4 years ago

Is it possible to have a stylistic set with an alternative tilde?

ohkimur commented 4 years ago

@Fallyx That might be a solution that can work for many people and it should be considered. I think it can be very nice to have something like that. However a solution like this will need additional maintability effort that should be taken into consideration.

OBS1: I think that if the main font from the typeface will adjust the horizontal balance of the tilde glyph will benefit everyone. It shouldn't be completely changed, but it can be adjusted a bit.

OBS2: For people with OCD (a.k.a. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) or ASD (a.k.a. Autism Spectrum Disorder) unbalanced glyphs can cause anxiety. Also many people that write code have one or both mentioned disorders or other similar derived disorders (possibly not even diagnosed or aware of this). I think this is an argument that is worth to be taken into consideration.

aaronbell commented 4 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! I definitely think that there can be some improvement on the tilde treatment as a whole—if you look at bug #216, I noted that I've treated the standalone versions differently than the diacritical version (which annoys the heck out of me). I want to go through and bring alignment to the whole lot of them.

Other things have kept me from addressing this sooner, but yes, this is on the list of fixes :).

Closing as a dupe of #216