

The most expensive coding font for free? - multispace
http://www.indiegogo.com/PragmataPro-the-ideal-programming-typeface-becomes-open-source?a=290841&i=addr
There is now a fundraising project going on for PragmataPro to make it available for free under a Creative Commons license
======
stdbrouw
There are just so many wonderful monospace fonts already out there that either
come with your OS (Monaco, Consolas, Ubuntu Mono) or are free that I don't
know why I should bother.

People still pay for fonts instead of downloading cheap knockoffs because of
ligatures, a wide amount of characters and meticulous kerning. All things that
a monospaced font doesn't need.

The one thing this font seems to add is that it is supposed to look good
without font smoothing. But then, why would anyone care about that in a world
where we always render fonts with anti-aliasing anyway?

~~~
fabrizioschiavi
True. There are a lot good monospaced font but it's impossible for me working
at screen with these cool fonts for this I designed PragmataPro. Tastes are
tastes.

All the glyphs of PragmataPro are designed under suggestions of programmers.
In the set there are many glyphs ignored by other monospaced font designers,
because I designed this font with programmers for programmers.

PragmataPro are designed to work with and without antilaliasing. And it works

~~~
tripzilch
Could you give some explicit examples where you think PragmataPro is better
than, say, Consolas?

(except for the APL glyphs, I'm not sure if Consolas has those)

Also, what possessed you to make a monospaced programming font _condensed_?
Squeezing the proportions that way either allows you more characters on a line
(bad programming practice) or less lines on a screen (also not good).

PS in your screenshot, the special ligature things such as the smiley and the
(P), are partly cut off.

~~~
shadowfiend
Still not sure if I like it, but squeezing proportions doesn't only allow more
characters on a line: in editors that support split views, it allows you to
view 80 characters per line side-by-side in two files on screens that aren't
as wide, plus fit your file browser on the left (again, if your editor has
one). There are definitely uses.

Not sure how the font being narrower results in less lines on a screen,
though. I doubt the font height is greater.

------
rdtsc
The font looks good. But does it really solve a problem most people need
solved? I don't remember last time I though "Hmm, if only I had a better font,
I would work so much faster/better...". I did think that when using Linux 10
years ago when my fonts were blurry and fuzzy but not now.

Another way to put it, even if that font was available for free now I don't
know I'd bother installing it just because ... there is the step of installing
it. I would just rather pick a font from my default OS font choices.

~~~
mrleinad
Remember that most of the time, people don't know what they want until they
see it.

~~~
praptak
Yeah, I have tested this hypothesis on myself. I have tried lots of fonts
touted as the best for programming and found exactly zero difference. Time
wasted, chalked up to experience.

I think that anyone considering a donation should at least try the freely
available fonts to see whether they make any difference.

~~~
peteforde
Why are you so determined to damn this effort? Can you imagine launching a
weekend web startup project and having someone on here to look elsewhere
before considering a donation?

People starting businesses come here to be encouraged, and this guy isn't
doing anything wrong. In fact, I wish more creatives would consider these
sorts of alternative approaches to patronage.

~~~
maratd
> Why are you so determined to damn this effort?

It's important to give people honest and clear feedback. By blindly
encouraging them, you are doing them a disservice. Perhaps he can fine-tune
his effort. Perhaps his talents are best applied elsewhere. You simply don't
know. If his skin isn't thick enough to accept honest criticism, he shouldn't
be starting or doing anything on his own. Honest feedback is important.

------
achompas
Let's delay arguments about whether one should change fonts or not [0] and
think about crowdfunding applied to design work. We should be more interested
in whether this will work, and why or why not.

Last summer, Hyperakt [1] crowd-funded a beautiful radial depiction of the
2010 World Cup brackets [2]. I paid $25 for a great poster [3], and now Deroy
has a new fan.

That project worked for the same reason all Kickstarter projects work: if the
project succeeds, users and producers exchange money for goods. If the market
doesn't validate your project, consumers aren't committed to pay and producers
don't reap any benefits. This is a great model for project planning and idea
validation.

On the other hand, this project extracts consumer rents _immediately._ If
Fabrizio doesn't hit the $220k goal [4], users only get an _option_ to
purchase a license for $100 minus their contribution. No repercussions for the
producer--he gets paid regardless. This is fine for licensing an existing
font, but it sucks for spec work or otherwise non-existent work.

I'm sure everyone has a few questions about the amount he's charging. [5]
However, we should focus on how Kickstarter provides a consumer-friendly
market while this project exists on a producer-friendly market. These are some
great introductory economic concepts.

EDIT: actually, each market has its own benefits. With Kickstarter, you can
obtain market validation for free (or cheap). With IndieGogo, you can
guarantee payment on existing products.

\-------

[0] I took an hour to switch from Monaco to Anonymous Pro; now I wish I hadn't
wasted that hour but at least I'm set for life.

[1] <http://hyperakt.com/>

[2] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-
cup-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-cup-radial-
bracket-poster)

[3] Even more beautiful after La Furia Roja took the Cup!

[4] Btw: ouch.

[5] Are we paying for the 4 years of work he's put in? Hasn't he made money
from other licenses already? There are probably some obvious answers I'm
missing out on.

~~~
fabrizioschiavi
Dude, you are distrustful... it's not the case:

I'm at the 50% of the work with PragmataPro, anyone can realize it just by
looking at the screenshots. If I wanted to escape with the loot I would not be
so stupid to draw about 1600 glyphs spending 3 years of my life.

Revenue from sales of licenses are not sufficient to cover even 10% of the
time I used to arrive here.

Then came the piracy that has stopped the sales.

My dream is to finish this project getting the appropriate reward for my hard
work. Am I wrong to dream this?

~~~
omarchowdhury
"Appropriate" reward would be the reward the market decides you get, not what
you hope for.

~~~
fabrizioschiavi
I seen. Pragmata is a "bestseller" in piracy market...

~~~
luser001
Don't mind the haters here. Good luck to you!

------
yan
Just wanted to chime in: I paid Fabrizio for PragmataPro last year and haven't
regretted it a bit. Maybe paying $100+ for a font isn't for everyone, but my
entire life revolves around looking at fixed-width fonts and it's important to
me. After trying almost everything else out there, Pragmata/PragmataPro feel
much better and make me happier looking at lots of text.

~~~
vl
Did you have a change to compare it to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono? How does it
fare?

------
sp332
Having both Latin and Cyrillic scripts done well in a single monospace font is
extremely rare. Even Ubunto Mono (which is brand-new and still in active
development) is having trouble, and they're professionals who take suggestions
from users very seriously. e.g. [http://blog.cosmix.org/2011/10/04/ubuntu-
mono-the-gamma-trav...](http://blog.cosmix.org/2011/10/04/ubuntu-mono-the-
gamma-travesty/) . No one has said publicly how much Canonical is paying
Dalton Maag to make the Ubuntu font family, but I'm sure it's a lot more than
$220,000.

~~~
fabrizioschiavi
FINALLY! A person that arrived to the heart of the problem!

I gave my best effort to achieve the perfect balance of symbols, letters
Western, Cyrillic, Greek. And someone has noticed!

I tried financiers from Google, Canonical, Apple, IBM, SAS, Microsoft and many
other companies with computer connection without success, knowing that these
companies have funded other projects of the same caliber of PragmataPro.

I keep hoping to find greater understanding between professionals like you.
Don’t let me down!

~~~
prakashk
> I gave my best effort to achieve .... And someone has noticed!

Perhaps if your campaign page had some verbiage about this font's special
features and how it is really different than others, it would help more people
to notice?

~~~
fabrizioschiavi
I'll do it. Thanks for this idea

------
hipsterelitist
4 years and over 200k dollars seems like quite a bit. I understand being
meticulous, but this is a bit absurd.

~~~
shin_lao
That's less than $ 25,000 / year, or around $ 120 / day. I don't think you can
find a decent designer for $ 120 / day.

~~~
gk1
Nor would he _want_ to hire anyone to design a monospaced font for four years.

~~~
moe
Nor is it very likely that he worked four years, every single day, on this
font.

~~~
peteforde
If you're genuinely interested, I'd suggest you check out the movie Helvetica.

Fonts often take thousands of man-hours to complete, and faces with extended
characters are much more involved.

What this designer might lack in business chops he makes up in generousity.
How many competent designers are willing to do something for $25k a year?

------
runn1ng
I prefer the coding font Anonymous Pro (has nothing to do with the hacktivist
group) - it's located here and it's for free.

<http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html>

Personally, PragmataPro looks too condensed for me. It is probably more
"economical" to use condensed fonts, but to me, it is really not very
readable.

------
DanBC
43% in Italian taxes? That kind of sucks. He needs an accountant to give
advice about (legally) reducing the tax burden to something more reasonable.

~~~
hellweaver666
People engaging in tax avoidance in Italy and Greece are one of the reasons
why these countries are balls deep in financial problems at the moment.

I saw a stat the other day that stated there were more Porsches in Greece than
people declaring they earn enough to actually afford to buy them (by a
significant amount)

~~~
bh42222
Huge numbers of people engaging in tax avoidance in Italy and Greece is
primarily the result of of a broken tax system.

~~~
shadowfiend
If by broken you mean a catastrophic cultural failure to acknowledge that you
should pay your taxes, and a resultant lack of enforcement, then yes.

~~~
Karunamon
I'd be considering avoidance too if I had to give just under half of
everything I make to the government.

*edit And there are perfectly legal ways to reduce your tax burden. The point I'm laboring so hard to make here is that it's an absurd tax rate.

~~~
shadowfiend
Indeed. And then you'd gladly take advantage of the social safety net if you
became unemployed, or upon retirement, and of the roads the government built,
and of the safety the police provides, etc.

Not paying taxes is great if you don't cost the government anything. All of a
sudden, though, when you want the services but don't want to pay for them, you
become the leech that people keep accusing the poor of being.

You may say, “but I never said I wanted any of those things!” Too bad. You
live in a society, and a democratic one at that (or at least I assume as
much—these citizens certainly do). That means if you want to pay fewer taxes,
“all” you have to do is convince enough people that the government shouldn't
provide a safety net, and then reduce taxes accordingly. In the meantime, just
like you can't murder or steal because society says it's wrong, you shouldn't
be able to dodge taxes.

And by the by, because these countries have VAT, when people don't pay their
taxes, typically what they do is they ask the customer to pay VAT (because
it's included in the price), _and then they pocket the resulting money_.

No, there really is no justification whatsoever for tax evasion. At least no
more of one than there is for stealing. In the end, it is still illegal. When
a government fails to enforce said illegality, you get a system that breaks.

~~~
Karunamon
The point I was trying to make is that giving half of everything to the
government is rather unnecessary in order to have a "social safety net". The
things you mentioned, unemployment, retirement, roads, police, etc, don't
require giving up half my income.

And guess what? People recognize that. And when people think they're being
jerked around..

~~~
shadowfiend
Honestly? You'd have to show me the spreadsheets to prove that assertion. Not
that the current system in any country is likely to be 100% efficient, mind
you, but I suspect it's more efficient than you give it credit for. That said,
that's hand-waving in both directions. I have no numbers to support my own
suspicions, either.

Also keep in mind that it isn't half of everything. These systems are
typically progressive, so it's likely because this will be a large sum
($220,000) all at once that the tax rate is that high.

------
struppi
If the 800 days are work days this means 4 years of work. ~200000 dollars
really is not much for this time frame - you could even call it a bargain :)
Anyway, I think I won't donate since I feel like I might lose the money when
the goal is not reached (I don't really want a discount on the license fee).

~~~
wccrawford
Yeah, I don't gamble. I'm willing to commit to kickstarter because I'll get my
money back if the thing falls through.

But whenever they say my money will go towards a discount (or a charity) if
the deal fails, I never go for it.

I'm not sure I've ever seen one succeed in that situation, actually.

~~~
davidu
What? You get your money back with Kickstarter? I've never heard of that...
I'm pretty sure I've lost a few hundred bucks on failed kick-starters...

I mean, they meet the goal, but the person never delivers.

~~~
wccrawford
Well yeah, if the person doesn't deliver, you've helped fund them, but get
nothing back. That's why kickstarter projects aren't supposed to supply actual
value for the pledge. A lot of the latest one offer the product as a bonus,
but don't tell you that you won't get the product if they fail.

~~~
davidu
Oh, I see. I guess I've only backed products or software or things where there
was a deliverable... even a book once!

------
tyw
I downloaded the screenshots of this font and have to admit I wish I could use
it right now. Looks pretty good to me. That said, the monetary goal seems a
bit lofty considering how many people this would really solve a need for.

Still, if the fundraising were arranged on something like kickstarter where
I'd get my donation back if it fails to reach the goal I'd kick in a bit. Not
terribly interested in a discount on the other license.

------
moonboots
I don't think this font is ideal for widescreen monitors. Vertical space is
more scarce than horizontal space, so a font that increases the former at the
expense of the latter doesn't use space efficiently. Leaving space usage
aside, is there evidence that a narrow font is more readable?

------
kenjackson
Fabrizio, have you thought about pitching this to Apple? Seriously. I
personally don't get it, but it seems like the type of thing that Jobs would
appreciate (if he liked it) and say it was worth the money. Ask Apple if
they'd buy it for XCode, so all Apple devs could have it.

~~~
krevis
Apple just introduced a new monospaced typeface in 10.6, Menlo. (It's the
default in Terminal and Xcode.) Seems unlikely they'd want to bother changing
it again so soon.

------
sp332
If anyone's wondering what the color scheme is, I believe it's Solarized
<http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized> (on HN previously
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393976> )

~~~
yankcrime
It is - it's actually my screenshot!

------
natesm
Why is it so narrow? It reminds me of doing things like "} else {" in code,
packing lots of content onto the screen and removing all readability.

~~~
beagle3
There are two opposing schools:

One (your?) school says readability is promoted by having _as much visible
structure as possible_. The other (mine!) says readability is promoted by
having as much visible context at the same time, as long as the structure is
apparent.

so instead of

    
    
        if (test1)
        {
            do_something1();
        }
        else
        {
            do_something2();
        }
    

I write

    
    
        if (test1) do_something1();
        else       do_something2();
    

4 times as much context on in the same space. Similarly, where (I assume)
you'd write:

    
    
        if (a == 1)
        {
             c = "hello";
        }
        else if (b == 2)
        {
             c = "goodbye";
        }
        else
        {
             c = "...";
        }
    

I write:

    
    
        c = a==1? "hello":
            b==2? "goodbye":
                  "...";
    

or even as a one liner:

    
    
        c = a==1? "hello":    b==2? "goodbye":    "...";
    

Even if you are _not_ used to this style, I don't think you can claim it is
unreadable. Just different.

~~~
natesm
In that sort of situation I would definitely prefer the ternary, although
nesting them sans (redundant, but explicit) parenthesis isn't something I
would do. I also like the somewhat Rubyesque one liners for simplistic if/else
pairs.

I just didn't want to write a bunch of nonsense code as an example.

------
swah
Folks have launched impressive projects with 10K there. I understand he wants
to pay a salary retroactively, but there is no way this is going to make 3.5K
per day.

------
micheljansen
This method of project funding suffers from an unfortunate separation of
"pain" and reward. I have to hand over my money now, knowing that it _might_
lead to the font being available in 800 days. That is a long time.

Compare this with two major alternatives to this model: Kickstarter and things
like the Humble Indie Bundle.

In one, I pledge money now for some future benefit, but I do so knowing that I
only end up paying if the project reaches enough support and funding. This
feels safe: I can pledge however I think the result is worth, because I only
pay if it succeeds.

In the other, I can get my reward immediately (instant gratification!), but I
can choose how much to pay for it.

The problem of Indiegogo, is that I have to pay now, but I cannot be sure that
I actually get anything in return (a discount on a license is not enough).
This means the risk of investment is much higher. I did pledge some money, but
not what I would pay for the font were it either in Kickstarter form or
through a "Humble Bundle" kind of model. I am sure I am not the only one.

To turn this into some useful advice for Fabrizio: How about giving donators
preview access to the unfinished font? This brings the reward closer to the
donation :)

~~~
fabrizioschiavi
I thinked a lot of time at a solution to this problem and the best one I found
it's this:

In case the campaign does not reach the objective, I will offer to every
contributors the regular license of PragmataPro™ at €20 (instead of €170) also
if the contributor donate also just $1 only. At the end of this campaign every
contributors can claims this offer. But please don’t offer anonymously if you
want this discount.

It's now written in the fundrasing page of Indiegogo and for me it's like to
be signed with blood...

------
acheron
I've been using one of the "Proggy" fonts from
<http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download> for awhile now... I don't
remember which one specifically, I think "Proggy Clean".

This one looks good too, and maybe it'd be better than Proggy or one of the
others around, but I don't think it's $220,000 better.

------
aggarwalachal
This is actually very expensive...

If I made a font like this, I would rather keep it as a donation, as the font
was developed out of free will.

BTW I use Menlo...

------
chadnickbok
800 days working without knowing whether or not there was actually a way to
make any money?

Lets _not_ talk about whether or not this will work. Lets talk about how this
is absolutely not, under any circumstances, a productive way to spend one's
time.

187 people bought the previous version of this font. Do some sales
projections, estimate market size, review the competition (such as the Ubuntu
monospace fonts), talk to the existing customers about the features they
actually _use_ everyday (hebrew characters? really?), and even I can conclude
that the market isn't going to be viable for the given business plan.

I'm going to call Eric Ries, and ask him nicely if he can send you a copy of
his book. Cause' you my friend, are doing it _wrong_ .

------
bjornsteffanson
While depth and ambition of this project is impressive (take a look at the
screenshots in the .zip), I think the goal seems a bit lofty, particularly
when there are many more-than-adequate free/open-source monospace fonts
available.

------
fabrizioschiavi
IMPORTANT UPDATE: In case the campaign does not reach the objective, I will
offer to every contributors the regular license of PragmataPro™ at €20
(instead of €170) also if the contributor donate also just $1 only. At the end
of this campaign every contributors can claims this offer. But please don’t
offer anonymously if you want this discount.

------
mrgoldenbrown
Does anybody have any data on how many people program in greek, cyrillic, or
hebrew characters? I suspect that 90% of programs that are out there could be
written with 10% of the glyphs that he is proposing to hand hint. Why not
focus on those and reduce the price accordingly?

~~~
jablan
There are, for example, comments and string literals, which may be non-
english. Also, people use monospaced fonts for all kinds of things aside from
programming (for example, my bash spits out errors in cyrillic). And if I pay
for a font, I would expect to be able to use it everywhere.

------
kreek
PragmataPro looks good, but when ever this topic comes up I always end up
going back to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.

[http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/ttf-bitstream-
vera/1....](http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/ttf-bitstream-vera/1.10/)

------
meric
13% fees, 43% taxes: Shouldn't the 13% fees be tax deductible, because they
were incurred as a result of earning the revenue?

------
itsnotvalid
What was the program being used for designing the font?

------
jeremygallant
$20 RAISED OF $220,000 GOAL

Yeah, I think I'm going to pass on this one.

~~~
aggarwalachal
come on.. everyone starts at $0

------
itsnotvalid
Always wonder how a new user of hacker news get front page to h'm so easily.
Seems to easy to game.

------
necenzurat
Off topic: is it just me or why does indiegogo.com resembles so much like
userscripts.org

