Comment by cyberpunk
21 hours ago
I remember trying to explain to some colleagues why I paid about 100 bucks for the font I use and why I wouldn’t share it with them and they just couldn’t get it.
(It’s Berkeley mono).
I don’t even know how many glyphs it is (it’s thousands) but for something I’m looking at for 6-8 hours a day, every single day and is the absolute peak of perfection (at least to me), 100 bucks seems like a fucking bargain to me.
shrug I guess these folks never sold something they made completely by themselves maybe.
>shrug I guess these folks never sold something they made completely by themselves maybe.
Not saying font designers shouldn't get paid, but they mostly aren't making things "completely by themselves", they are mostly making derivative works from things that exist, without any consideration for the original authors.
What do you suppose they should do to the original authors? Perhaps the original author is Claude Garamond who died in the sixteenth century? Or the unknown workers who carved the inscription at Trajan's column in the second century AD?
So you understand the issue, it's derivative works all the way down.
4 replies →
The "peak of perfection" does not support even just European languages, not having full coverage even for Latin scripts. But it's a "love letter for the golden age of computing", and the golden age had massive problems with scripts for languages other than English, so maybe it's intentional.
https://usgraphics.com/static/products/TX-02/datasheet/TX-02...
Hey, Berkeley Mono supports most Western European languages, can you tell me what's missing? I can add it. Btw, the tagline is about the aesthetics. :)
Hi Neil, I'm not that person you replied to but in my projects I require Cyrillic glyphs for Russian and Ukrainian texts. Also when checking out your website just now, I wasn't able to add a Berkeley Mono App License module in your ordering system. I assume I need a App License to embed the font in my app? But I also can't seem to find any information about the app license itself on your site as well.
4 replies →
Is it a mistake, on page 4 of the linked datasheet, that "SemiBold" is shown for two different weights? I can't help but think that something like "DemiBold" was what the lighter weight was supposed to be labeled.
2 replies →
What percentage of monospace text on the internet uses random obscure glyphs? This isn't really a practical problem.
Pretty much anyone coding in another language. Coders do sometimes buy fonts if they are into fonts and nice terminals.
> shrug I guess these folks never sold something they made completely by themselves maybe
Ignoring that they likely didn’t make it completely by themselves (standing on the shoulders of giants and such), it’s quite possible that those people don’t believe that a file should cost money. I’ve made a few things as close to “completely by myself” as possible and given them away for free, and those were physical objects - I lose it when I give it away! I have absolutely no problem giving away 1s and 0s for free, I can make as many copies of the original as I want with no additional effort.
Of course we don’t live in a world where everyone can follow their passions without needing money in return for sharing the result with the world, so it’s fully understandable people want to sell their art. It’s disingenuous and reductive to assume that anyone who doesn’t want to pay for art has never made anything completely by themselves, though.
Same for me, same font, same logic. The author put a lot of hands-on work into making something I stare at all day long. I even just bought a license for a friend for his birthday because I love it.
But I'm not sharing my copy with anyone else. This isn't insulin or something. They'll be just fine without it.
> Berkeley Mono
Link for the lazy https://neil.computer/notes/berkeley-mono-font-variant-popul...
And ofc there was a HN discussion;
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38322793
how does that work? you set this font to be used by all your computers and devices?
Never really considered it, but taking a quick glance: yes, I'd pay $100 for that too, especially as my main font for programming interface.