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armadillu
pmags
My thoughts exactly. Berkeley Mono looks great on the website and in the PDF data sheet, but the real test is how does it look in my terminal and editor, especially when compared side-by-side with my current preferred font (Pragmata Pro; also commercial but well worth it!)
michaelmcdonald
I purchased Berkeley Mono to give it a shot. While I found it visually appealing, it still cannot compete in the terminal against Pragmata Pro due to how narrow Pragmata Pro is. I can fit so much more on my screen yet still have it be clean and legible with Pragmata Pro.
neilpanchal
We've been working on a condensed version, it has been almost complete (all 440+ glyphs) since last year but it has a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out. This will also enable a Width ('wdth') axis on variable fonts so if your editor supports, can smoothly go from Regular ---> Condensed ---> Compressed versions.
There is also a complete Extended version but it has many issues, we won't be releasing that anytime soon.
neilpanchal
Thanks and good feedback, beta testing was done in a similar way - font cut with a few missing glyphs and was limited to ASCII-basic set. I'll see if I can extend this more generally.
eej71
One idea to consider... offer the font but with the vowels jumbled around and the digits jumbled around. I can see everything I need. But would need to buy it if I really want to use it.
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pbowyer
Yes please - in my case because fonts look different on Windows and Mac (and Linux?) and I've been caught a few times after buying fonts that looked great only to discover all screenshots were from Macs and on Windows it was nothing like it.
cschmidt
I'd second the vote for some "testing" fonts. At the very least, could you include some screenshots of larger chunks of code, with {} etc? I can't really tell how this will look on a screen full of code.
neilpanchal
Here is some Python, but no {}: https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/#b...
I'll plan for a nice page with various languages and full page screenshots.
Edit: Fixed link, thanks.
josefrichter
MonoLisa has a playground where you can paste code snippets and try the font - that might be a good approach for other fonts aimed at developers. https://www.monolisa.dev/playground
[I am not affiliated with MonoLisa]
lghh
MonoLisa also has a trial version. [1] They have a great site, I love the font, and the availability of a free trial was the icing on the cake. Great experience all around.
huhtenberg
Looks nice in principle, but being suitable for the actual daily use (for coding) will depend on how it renders in a specific IDE at a specific size on a specific OS. There's LOTS of mono fonts that look great in larger sizes or on Macs, but that all but unbearable to look at in smaller sizes on Windows.
There's no mention of this font having a manually hinted TTF version, which is pretty much required for rendering under these conditions. This gives me a very big pause. As others have said - at $75 a pop this font absolutely needs a downloadable, installable and usable trial. How it looks in PDF and rendered to a bitmap may showcase its design well, but not its real-world usage. That's assuming that the author means to position it also as a coding font (which seems to be the case judging by the samples).
neilpanchal
TTF hinting is automatic, using vertical and horizontal stem widths. Manual hinting is WIP. I've gotten feedback for trial fonts, please sign up for notifications at the bottom of the page and we'll email you when that's properly available. It requires some font engineering and writing up a license for it.
raegis
Do you have any screenshots with emacs or vim on Linux, and maybe a terminal?
neilpanchal
iTerm (on macOS): https://berkeleygraphics-public.s3.amazonaws.com/static/imag...
I don't have a linux desktop handy, I'll create a full suite of screenshots in various environments and languages to post on the website.
flobosg
What a great marketing page. I loved the animation!
I’m also a big fan of the design of the author’s website: https://neil.computer/
usrme
Wholly agreed in regards to the author's website, it's absolutely fantastic!
cloud_herder
You know those pictures where it says "the longer you look the worse it gets" - this is the opposite of that. The longer I look at this site, the more I love it.
wolverine876
It's not unlike scrolling through a social media feed, with the short segments, boxes, and animations.
lidavidm
This may be a dumb question, but how do you make a document like that fake patient chart in this demo? [1]
Is there an editor that can do things like this? Or is it all laid out by hand?
[1] https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-february-update/
neilpanchal
Yes, done by hand, a lot of elbow grease. Same with the animation which took an insane amount of time (700 frames). Shout out to MonoDraw (Berkeley Mono works wonderfully with it): https://monodraw.helftone.com/
lidavidm
Ah, thank you for the response! I'm quite impressed, seeing that example nearly made me impulse buy the font.
goldenchrome
It’s likely laid out by hand.
Given the file name “Artboard-2” my guess is that it’s done in Adobe Illustrator, but you can do that in any graphics editing tool like Photoshop, Figma, Sketch, etc.
For typographic work, I recommend a vector-based tool because it scales to any resolution.
bduerst
Not saying this is what they used for this demo, but Crystal Reports is commonly used in the medical industry for print/reporting like that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Reports#/media/File:SA...
.jpg){kind=link}
(if that is what you were asking)
alangibson
I rarely get excited by fonts, but I'm loving this one. I only recently realized how long machine readable fonts have been around while working on a reproduction of the Apollo 11 flight plan. I love how this one has some of their flavor while still being easy on the eyes.
zellyn
I feel the same. Very nice font!
abeyer
The licensing is unclear/vague/contradictory... I'm totally confused what the 'developer' license actually means when it says you can use it for "personal use in professional context, but not commercial." And how is a subscription for a print product handled? Do I have to burn my printed materials if I don't renew a subscription?
Font vendors seem to _love_ coming up with weird snowflake licensing schemes rather than trying to stick with something well understood.
neilpanchal
I actually wanted to make it simpler. Separating professional use (this is how Input Mono font does it) and commercial use allows developers to use fonts for their daily work, but the machine belongs to their employer and the work they do is for their employer; while also being able to provide a separate Commercial license for companies and businesses.
There are no page view limits for websites (no trackers), installation limits , epub/ebook limits, etc. Basically it is along the lines of FontSpring's worry free license and I think its even better.
abeyer
Thanks, that's what I thought it was _trying_ to say, but I'm not sure that's what it actually _does_ say.
You might look at the jetbrains individual license for some language that I think is more clear and objective: A personal license must be paid for by a single named individual, not paid or reimbursed by a company, and is not re-assignable, while the organizational license is more a "floating seat" that can be paid by a company and assigned to individual employees as needed. That helps sidestep the mess of trying to define what is "professional but not commercial."
Also, under a subscription model I'd want some assurance that previously created print materials receive a perpetual license even if I didn't renew and that I wouldn't have to try to excise it from everywhere I've used it in the past if the license ever lapsed.
Kon-Peki
Does this mean that if I am a one-man-freelancing-shop I need a commercial license rather than a developer license?
As a follow up: If I work for SuperMegaCorp as a W-2 employee, I obviously qualify for a developer license, but as a 1099 contractor? And if I send a PDF invoice that uses this font - is that professional or commercial usage? Clearly, I am not a lawyer ;)
Very nice font, BTW.
duped
This left me more confused - there are two cases :
- the typeface is used in media, or otherwise distributed
- the typeface is used locally in some app
Which license supports which case?
neilpanchal
Print licensing is very standard and used by the majority of the font fountries with exception of Lineto and a few others. For example, buy 1 seat (1 designer) and that designer can make unlimited print products as long as they have the seat to use it. It is based on installation on a computer that is used to develop the print materials. Some font fountries prevent the use of embedding fonts in the distributed media (such as PDFs).
Where I made an explicit exception in the license is for developers using the typeface in IDEs, and using it in professional context. Also check input mono license which is where I got the inspiration from: https://input.djr.com/license/
bborud
I like the font. I'd pay $75 for a license if it works for editing code.
The problem is that it typically takes a week or so of use to determine if it would work for me. I'm not going to pay $75 for something that I won't know if I have any use for.
shirro
Very effective presentation. It looks fantastic. Will be good value at $75 for some people but not for me with so many other great mono fonts available (many with code ligatures). Probably better for designers than coders. With small fonts for everyday I don't see any big difference in readibilty beyond something like Fira Code unles you are very particular. Beyond that it is mostly taste (or lack of) but then I currently use Comic Code Ligature so I am clearly crazy.
brightffw
I very much welcome the new wave of mono fonts being developed recently. As a visually impaired person who has issues differentiating fonts on different backgrounds, the variety of fonts is very important as it allows me to find the optimal font for the environment and color contrast. Mono variety used to be limited but I can see a renaissance now!
leetrout
I would love to see ligatures incorporated but I understand that is a polarizing opinion.
I love the little niceties of rendering arrows which are used all over the place these days.
rootusrootus
I am personally not a fan of ligatures, but since they seem to be entirely optional and controlled by the IDE, I think it would be nice to see them included. For people not like me, because it won't hurt me, and will broaden the appeal.
Griffinsauce
I love this take, thanks for being pragmatic and open minded!
cflewis
Yeah, I'm one of those people who has spent so long with ligatures that not having them is a deal breaker for me.
I use PragmataPro and have done for many years. It's pretty similar to this but has lots of nice ligatures.
seabea
Yup, instant purchase, if/when ligatures are added.
kitsunesoba
+1, this would be an instant purchase if it included ligature options. I like supporting font designers but for a mono font I need this.
zitterbewegung
I like the typeface but I think it would be helpful to have a way for someone to copy and paste their code as a preview but I think that if you allowed that then others could download your font for free. You might want to mention that it costs $75 above the fold and I would think that you would want also to center the column of the site itself (these are nitpicks though).
bobbylarrybobby
One option to allow users to preview the font while not letting them download it for free is to have them submit their code sample, render an image of it on the server, then send that back to the user. Not as nice as rendering the font in browser, of course, but it works.
kevincox
The problem with rendering a picture is that it doesn't reflect how it renders on my setup in my editor which can be quite important.
kiddico
I've seen projects posted here that render your code as a screenshot for posting online or something. (??) That always seemed silly to me.
This is would be the perfect application of it.
zitterbewegung
I was thinking that but others also mentioned to have a trial mode font that didn’t have a complete character set also. Rendering a picture might become costly.
muhammadusman
I am impressed by how quickly the page loaded, looked at the source code and what do you know? No modern UI library being used, semantic class names and not a lot of code being loaded. I'm impressed by the simplicity!
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I can only really judge a font when its loaded in my system, running in my setup. I wish font makers targeting developers would release trial fonts (with some essential chars missing or similar), so that we could test them properly before paying.
I am always looking for a better font, and this one looks like it may be an improvement over my current one.