What are some less known or underused open source fonts?

  • chunes@lemmy.world
    8·
    7 days ago

    Agave. My favorite monospace/programming font. What I like best about it is how the baseline isn’t where the descenders begin. Makes it look unique in a nice way.

  • Luc@lemmy.world
    4·
    6 days ago

    I see lots of links here but no reasons why each is underused or anything.

    Look, I’m a simple person, what I ask of a font is:

    • differentiate your symbols — I’m talking 1, l, I, and i with more than a single pixel difference at 11pt 90DPI, and the 0 should be clearly less round than O
    • be readable. No extra thinness, fancy swirls… look at any default font as an example (Arial or whatever), or most people’s custom web font as a counter-example
    • proportionally spaced. I like \thinspace as thousand separator and I cannot lie
    • indefinitely usable (for example as part of a game) after a single purchase that I can do as a consumer. Or free/donationware of course

    A very tall order I know. So far I’ve reviewed a bunch of fonts (I wasn’t procrastinating why do you ask) and found PT Sans is the best option I’ve seen, so I’m using it, but I hate its Q. It’s basically an O with a tilde below it. Any better options if all you want is clarity and normalcy?

    Edit: near the bottom of the replies there’s Hyperlegible. Somehow I had read over that. Seems to check the boxes! I’ll be looking at this closer on my computer later.

  • cub Gucci@lemmy.today
    6·
    7 days ago

    For those who love comic sans I might have bad news: you might be borderline dyslexic.

    Switching to OpenDyslexic 3 helps

    • TheUnicornOfPerfidy@feddit.ukEnglish
      9·
      7 days ago

      OpenDyslexic is less good for most dyslexics than you think. It’s based on some ideas of what might be useful rather than specific evidence. I recomend Sylexiad instead. Particularly Sylexiad Sans rather than Serif, but it’s all about finding what works best for you.

  • kshade@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    It’s freeware not open source but I like Monofur. Might not be the most beautiful font but I find it very legible and the distinction between similar characters is quite good. It’s available in the Debian/Ubuntu repositories too.

  • Ashu@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    7 days ago

    I’d say several fonts on Google Fonts (the only place I know lol) are pretty good. I don’t see them mentioned anywhere and I’m not a font enthusiast per se, so I’d call them less known. Some of my favourite - Courier Pro, Doto, Sono, SUSE Mono, Josefin Slab, and Martian Mono.

    And a couple others default on my Windows PC that I like: Bookman Old Style, Yu Gothic (Fun fact - this font was used by the hit anime Neon Genesis Evangelion for their english title cards) and wierdly enough, Segoe UI. I love that Windows 8 aesthetic it brought.