

A monospace that looks like a proportional  - Garbage
http://design.canonical.com/2011/09/ubuntu-monospace-beta/

======
splicer
Here's what O'Reilly books use:
<http://www.lucasfonts.com/fonts/thesansmono/about/>

Ubuntu Monospace is the first free font I've seen which approaches TheSans
Mono's level of quality.

~~~
nagnatron
Actually, Consolas is extremely similar.

~~~
mistermustard
Lucas de Groot, who designed TheSans, also did Calibri and Consolas.

<http://www.lucasfonts.com/case-studies/calibri-consolas/>

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Adaptive
Letter Gothic circa 1960 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_Gothic>

Nothing beats it.

~~~
Adaptive
For those interested Letter Gothic is available from several online type shops
but be aware that since the original was released it has been reissued as both
fixed and proportional variants. Additionally, it looks good out of the box on
OSX but under Linux you'll want to ensure that you are running a font config
like Infinality.

I own the monotype version of regular and bold, they work well, but other
variants might be worth trying out.
[http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/singles/monotype/letter_gothic...](http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/singles/monotype/letter_gothic/)

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pygorex
FTA: "We need to test the readability of the font, particular the Cyrillic and
Greek which have had less testing."

Why not release the Ubuntu font-in-progress to the general public and create a
"font bug tracker" where users can report their experience with the font in
various characters sets across multiple devices? Ubuntu is open-source,
community based software - why not open source the font design?

~~~
decklin
One possible reason is that people tend not to upgrade their fonts. Therefore,
old and buggy versions would remain out there, and lots of people copy fonts
from their friends instead of getting them from the source.

It's a difficult problem: what's better for free software? Sticking to our
principles of open development even for assets, or ensuring that potential new
users see a high-quality, finished product? I don't know the answer.

~~~
xorglorb
They're distributing it through a PPA, so assuming that you click "Install"
when update manager bugs you once a week, you should have the newest version.

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SpoonMeiser
"The full set are true monospace fonts, each character being exactly 0.5em
wide"

Umm... a 0.5em width m?

~~~
losvedir
I used to think "em" was defined as the width of the letter m (hence the
name), but The Elements of Typographic Style doesn't mention that:

 _Type is usually measured in picas and points ... but horizontal spacing is
measured in ems, and the em is a sliding measure. One em is a distance equal
to the type size. In 6 point type, an em is 6 points; in 12 point it is 12
points ... Thus a one em space is proportionally the same in any size._

The book then shows a little diagram with several different sized squares.

So, as I understand it, one em is the width equal to the height of a font
(which is generally, but not always, the width that the letter m is designed
as). What your quote is saying, then, is all the letters fit in a box which is
twice as tall as it is wide.

~~~
InnocentB
I think you're a bit confused here. It's the height of the capital M, not the
width of the lowercase em, that is generally 1em.

~~~
thisrod
"In olden days, an 'em' was the _width_ of an 'M', but this is no longer true;
ems are simply arbitrary units that come with a font" - the TeXbook, p60

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mrb
Mark Shuttleworth really cares about design. He is like the Steve Jobs of
Linux :)

~~~
bergie
Yeah, it is a bit weird: some of the stuff from Canonical's design department
is great (like scrolling indicators, getting rid of 'Quit'), and some is
mediocre at best (like Unity)

~~~
hasenj
Unity is awesome. I honestly find it better than OS X's desktop.

~~~
Adaptive
Unity is risk taking and I applaud it. Some very cool features when I played
with the recent beta. Easy to pick up but has some power features as well.

Now if I could just get my brand new touchscreen to fully support it's cool
gestures.

------
rmc
It looks like "Error establishing database connection" in a proportional font
to me. :P

Here's the google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&client=ubuntu&channel=cs&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Adesign.canonical.com%2F2011%2F09%2Fubuntu-
monospace-beta%2F)

~~~
morsch
The original worked for me, albeit slowly. If it's still slow for people, you
can try the Coral CDN mirror
[http://design.canonical.com.nyud.net/2011/09/ubuntu-
monospac...](http://design.canonical.com.nyud.net/2011/09/ubuntu-monospace-
beta/)

I really like monospace (mostly) sans-serif fonts, as opposed to the Courier
family, for development and terminal work. Another free addition is always
welcome, although I'm not sure I like this better than my current font (DejaVu
Sans Mono, I think). The raised middle stem in the 'm' looks decidedly weird
to me, for example.

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johncoltrane
So the (open) sources of this font family are available in a closed format and
not a single tool used by the designer is available on Ubuntu itself without
resorting to convoluted solutions and (possibly) breaking a bunch of licences
in the process.

What if an actual enthusiastic Ubuntu user wants to participate in the project
or fork it? Well he is forced to tinker with wine or work on a Windows PC or
buy a Mac.

Great.

~~~
wmf
I guess Canonical couldn't find any professional type designers who are also
free software martyrs. The solution to this problem should be to improve the
free tools, not to ask pros to reduce their productivity.

------
tintin
Very impressive! A neat trick to make small characters serif.

~~~
sjwright
Nearly _all_ nominally sans-serif mono-spaced fonts do this.

~~~
tintin
Very stupid of me that I didn't notice this. But I never noticed it until I
saw the Canonical font. Maybe that's why it looks proportional?

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Ideka
I don't know about operating systems, but these folks at Canonical sure know
how to make some pretty damn good fonts.

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josscrowcroft
Whoa! Can't wait to use this.

------
VMG
link is dead

