search

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.
Other
25.39k stars 803 forks source link

Offer a 'harder', less-cursive variant of the italic (variable axis?) #545

Open jam1015 opened 3 years ago

jam1015 commented 3 years ago

Requesting inclusion of proposed italics presented here: https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code/issues/468#issuecomment-854196781 possibly as a stylistic set.

I really love Cascadia Mono because it is very easy to read while still hinting at the old school aesthetics of typewriter font. I think that this is slightly lost in the new italics. The new 'i' for example: image is kind of a generic curve while the old one: image is incredible: the right mix of a technical/smooth, with a hint of art-deco, as if it were the handwriting of an ingenious yet meticulous industrial designer from the fifties.

I could list out my thoughts on all of the different issues with each of letters but it would be a similar statement of how the old 'harder' serifs were a perfect contrast with the smooth rest of the letter. I could add that the new 'j' looks a lot like a soft referse-facing bracket. And that the large top curve of the 'l' can be a little ostentatious/distracting.

Basically I think you got it right in this sample that was posted in issue https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code/issues/468#issuecomment-854196781 :

image

My only feedback on that sample is that it might be more consistent/aesthetically pleasing for the 'f' to end with a serif on the bottom (like the 'r') rather than going below the line. This would agree with the mix of hardness and smoothness that characterizes the other letters.

I recognize that I'm just a guy sitting over here complaining! But in this case I think you had almost reached perfection and went a little too far.

So basically requesting that we be given the option to use the 'harder' serif version of the italics which were excellently designed as in issue https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code/issues/468#issuecomment-854196781, possibly modifying the 'f' to land on a serif to fit the overall aesthetic and match the style of the 'r'.

A way to implement this might be to include this as a stylistic set option. Like +ss09 to get the more concrete feeling italics.

So, to summarize, I love this font and respect the hard work that the team does and I was looking forward to the new italics. These suggestions here would bring the italics back towards what I like about the regular non-italic version of the font.

jam1015 commented 3 years ago

I just fooled around with the fonts in FontForge and found that the 'l' and 's' and 'r' of my preferred version are basically oblique (with some subtle changes such as the angle of the surface of the right tip of lowercase 'l'. . Was also able to change analogous letters with diacritics. The oblique version of a 'f' looks good as well. Not sure of what my preferred serif length would be if there was one. My goal was to make my own version of my preferred italic font but I couldn't immediately figure out how to make ttf a font family for Mac, and found that FontForge introduced some errors to characters that I hadn't even changed. Don't have any more time to spend on this right now. Thanks a gain for tolerating Mr. backseat driver over here.

aaronbell commented 3 years ago

Hi @jam1015. Thanks for your comments!

In conceiving Cascadia Code Italic, we wanted to bring an element of cursive / curvaceousness into the design and, faced with the vibrancy of the cursive forms (the r, s, l, and f) I was more cautious with the other letters and chose instead to make them more static to help balance the design. However, clearly that approach didn't really resonate with everyone :).

After relegating the heavily cursive forms to the stylistic set, I sat with the design that you showed above. I used it as the default font in github, wikipedia, in my coding environment, everywhere I could. After a week, I ended up feeling that the italic just didn't feel settled. The horizontals had become predominant in the design and it became too static / cold (at least in my view!). So I worked to re-introduce that movement in the design and here we are!

I can understand the desire for something 'harder' to offer a simpler / clearer look to the italic. For example, the font Recursive has a "casual" axis that offers more relaxed / harder variants. And I'd definitely be all up for offering that sort of thing, buuuut and changes like this has a ripple effect. So it isn't just correcting / adjusting the full set of latin / extended latin lowercase (I made other changes to the lowercase, so it isn't quite a question of adding back the old versions), but also translating that change to the Cyrillic lowercase, Greek lowercase, and everything else to keep the design in sync... eh heh.

Soooooo, not a small amount of work, and unfortunately I just don't see it happening any time soon.

You should definitely take a go at modifying the font yourself! I'd suggest, in your case, to download this PR: https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code/pull/491 which has the UFOs of the designs you want and then go from there. It won't get you all the other updates that have happened since, but at least you have the forms which you can import into the later version.

Anyway, I'll keep this bug around as an idea for a future feature! 👍

jam1015 commented 3 years ago

/Thanks a lot for your response! In the end I figured out what FontForge was messing up in the change I was making (had to remove overlaps). I was able to make a version of the font for personal use by replacing the very cursive characters from 2105.24 with oblique versions made from the normal character set. I still have a lot to figure out; I made the regular italic version by importing the variable ttf italic version, but found that FontForge didn't spit back out a variable font with bold italics, so I used the static font to make a bold italic version. If I make a full set of static versions I'll go ahead and maybe put it up on my github (if its allowed). Have to investigate how to use the UFO format; maybe that allows creation of variable font. Still have to learn basics of GitHub too like how to download the contents of a pull request as you mention above. Putting this effort in because after using this font I really can't see myself looking at Menlo or Consolas all day after using this font.