
Recursive Mono and Sans, a free variable type family - andrewshadura
https://www.recursive.design/
======
robocat
"The characters within both subfamilies, Sans & Mono, maintain the exact same
width across all font styles, independently of the values set on the Weight,
Casual, Slant, and Italic axes. You can therefore use Recursive to create
animated font transitions without breaking the layout of UI elements like
menus and buttons."

This is a useful feature - is it common in other fonts?

I certainly have run into problems in HTML with bold text causing button
widths to change.

~~~
pedrocr
I've seen that in other contexts as well. Like slide presentations reflowing
paragraph text when a word gets bolded. It's definitely a useful feature to be
able to guarantee that never happens.

~~~
robocat
A width change that causes reflow is the worst - especially if it happens on
mouseover because at specific window widths a button can "run away" from the
pointer, or get into a bistable flickering reflow.

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bctnry
Hard to discriminate between captial letter "O" and number "0". Not that good
for actual coding IMO.

P.S.: This world really does NOT need any more look-good-only-under-Chrome
websites.

~~~
alpha_squared
If you use the "mono" slider, it adds the angled line inside zero for
differentiation while monospacing the characters. Presumably, you'd want
monospace characters for programming, so I think that's fair.

Your criticism is true for non-monospacing, though I think any fonts suffer
from that.

~~~
dspillett
There are people out there who code in variable spaced fonts. Not sure how
they can myself but some report feeling more productive that way, and for them
this could be more of a consideration.

~~~
cjbprime
I just started doing this last week! Using Iosevka Aile.

------
simosx
It takes effort to figure out which languages/scripts are supported.

The FAQ says that over 200 languages are supported but what they actually mean
is that the font covers the Unicode Basic Latin, Latin-1 Supplement and
possibly some of the Latin Extended.

That is, the font does not support yet anything non-Latin.

~~~
pygy_
The list is in the penultimate part of the main page. There are no anchor
links, so here's the full list:

————

Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta,
Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Atayal,
Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba,
Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano,
Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Cornish, Corsican,
Creek, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware,
Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino,
Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician,
Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut),
Guadeloupean Creole, Gwich’in, Haitian Creole, Hän, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon,
Hopi, Hotcąk (Latin), Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian,
Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese
(Latin), Jèrriais, Kaingang, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel,
Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda,
Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Kurdish (Latin), Ladin, Latin, Latino sine
Flexione, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish,
Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian,
Meriam Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh-
Patha, Nagamese Creole, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean,
Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Old Icelandic, Old Norse,
Onĕipŏt, Oshiwambo, Ossetian (Latin), Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese,
Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian,
Romansh, Rotokas, Sami (Inari Sami), Sami (Lule Sami), Sami (Northern Sami),
Sami (Southern Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic,
Serbian (Latin), Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian,
Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio (Latin), Somali, Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Sorbian
(Upper Sorbian), Sotho (Northern), Sotho (Southern), Spanish, Sranan,
Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok
Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen
(Latin), Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Vietnamese,
Volapük, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-
Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec,
Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni

————

Support for non-English letters makes this more than a tech demo IMO, the
whole thing is pretty impressive.

~~~
simosx
I have seen this list.

Let's search if "Greek" is supported. It is, because I can see "Creek"? Creek
is not Greek, it is the language/script of an American Indian tribe. Then, the
list is too long to find a specific language.

What should have happened, is to add in the document an extra paragraph that
reads like this:

> This font currently supports the Latin-based Unicode character ranges. See
> below the full list of language support.

~~~
pygy_
You read too fast. Above the list, you'll find this paragraph:

————

To meet the needs of global communication, Recursive supports a wide range of
Latin-based languages, including Vietnamese. It also comes with an extended
set of currencies, symbols, fractions, and arrows.

~~~
simosx
It does indeed say that.

I do not think this has been a last-minute addition. I read the paragraph
again, and I found it difficult to quickly scan the text that is presented in
that font. The letters appear to me (Linux/X11) as too thin and faint.

Does anyone else have this issue?

~~~
pygy_
In case you had doubts, I'm not in any way affiliated with the font (though I
find it pretty cool, and appreciate the amount of work that has gone into
building it up to this point).

------
wodenokoto
If you also don't know what "single-stroke casual signpainting"-style is, here
are some links to help you:

Google image search: [https://www.google.com/search?q=single-
stroke+casual+signpai...](https://www.google.com/search?q=single-
stroke+casual+signpainting&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X)

Nice Youtube video:
[https://youtu.be/y3WZNSGBsoc?t=35](https://youtu.be/y3WZNSGBsoc?t=35) [skip
to 0:35]

~~~
airstrike
Also check out @oliversigns on instagram or this youtube video if you're
allergic to social media:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOk4iEOmCL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOk4iEOmCL0)

Soooo satisfying to watch

------
jimbo1qaz
I'm a bit disappointed there's no x-height control I can decrease to get
longer ascenders and shorter lowercase letters. It's a recurring annoyance I
have with almost every font being released nowadays, I find their x-heights
consistently too big and ascenders consistently too short for my tastes.

------
VadimPR
This looks like a very impressive evolution in font tech. Props!

------
hoptank
Aside from the technical comments here, "warmly energetic" is an accurate and
endearing description.

------
jmiskovic
I really like the idea of variable type fonts, especially when they go beyond
the simple weight or spacing. This allows for smooth transitions and
innovative patterns in UIs.

If anyone knows more such interesting variable type fonts, please link to
them.

~~~
jmiskovic
I went through v-fonts.com and found few interesting applications of
technology:

[https://v-fonts.com/fonts/cheee-variable](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/cheee-
variable) [https://v-fonts.com/fonts/this-man-this-
monster](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/this-man-this-monster)
[https://v-fonts.com/fonts/whoa](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/whoa)
[https://v-fonts.com/fonts/kicker-variable](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/kicker-
variable)
[https://v-fonts.com/fonts/graduate](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/graduate)
[https://v-fonts.com/fonts/fs-pimlico-glow-vf](https://v-fonts.com/fonts/fs-
pimlico-glow-vf)

Most use it to modify weight, and sadly weight also affects the spacing
between characters.

------
tannhaeuser
That might just be a great font for casual tech docs, like programming hands-
on tutorials, where you want the typography to invite your readers to
experimentation, rather than having the text look like set in stone.
Unfortunately, it has a double-story "a", and the "fi" ligature spacing to the
right looks off in the page's heading.

------
saagarjha
The cube was fun to play with on my iPad but it took me a while to figure out
that there was more content below it and how to scroll down to see it (for
those wondering: you can scroll on the little bottom part).

------
a_e_k
Oddly, the left and right curly braces seem to have different vertical
alignments in the "sans" (proportional) variant with medium weight and
"linear" style.

------
PMunch
I should really have a Serif version as well. Not a huge fan of the "casual"
look, but going in the opposite direction to a "stricter" Serif would be nice.

------
Hendrikto
Nice font and all, but the page is unreadable after the demo showing a normal
font wrapping, making the page jump, because… well… it makes the page jump
around.

~~~
pygy_
What browser/device are you reading this on?

------
z3t4
I did not understand much of the copy, the animation was very slow, but I do
like the font. Will test tomorrow how well it handles without sub pixel
antialias.

------
samwhiteUK
I'm on Firefox 70.0.1 on Ubuntu 16.04, and the only thing I can change is the
size, and the light/dark. Nothing else makes a difference. Shame.

~~~
smorks
In Firefox Developer 71.0b7, it works for me on Windows 10, but not Windows 7.
So maybe it has something to do with the OS?

~~~
alwillis
Yes, the underlying operating system needs to support the new OpenType spec
1.8 to support variable fonts in a browser.

------
thanatropism
Interesting concept.

I've gotten used to programming fonts with ligatures. But I'm not every use
case. We live in an amazing era of abundance...

------
JulianMorrison
I like it but the x is a little unfortunately swastika-shaped at high casual
and high slant.

~~~
Yajirobe
...seriously?

~~~
JulianMorrison
Take a look for yourself.

------
matt_the_bass
Is this font supported by out of the box Mac or Windows fonts?

------
d--b
Great font for letters. IMHO, the numbers aren't so good.

~~~
asutekku
They look kind of having their weights upside down. Usually the upper side is
smaller so for an example 8 looks really weird.

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microcolonel
Just needs a _condensed_ axis. Very cool.

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tacone
This is so sick! [in a good way] I wish it supported ligatures.

~~~
tazard
It supports => for me. haven't tested any others

~~~
dole
<= and => seem to produce two completely different types of ligatures,
unfortunately. No cool ligatures for << and >>.

Edit, I see there is a proper greater than or equal to ligature, but it
defaults to an arrow when => is typed. Not sure how to key the other.

------
zestyping
This entire page is broken on Firefox 70.

~~~
andrewshadura
It isn't on my system.

