Show HN: Xenia – A monospaced font built with a custom Python engine

The 'a' and the 'o' are a bit similar, but all in all I can see myself trying this out. Reminds me a bit of Comic Code and Maple Mono. Thanks for sharing!

There are a few odd things about this post though. Take this as well-intentioned feedback.

- New account. No previous submissions or comments.

- New Github account. No previous activity.

- Mentions custom engine (cool!), but omits any details.

- Calls other mono fonts 'fugly'; refuses to elaborate.

- Releasing based on interest feels like engagement farming. Let me know when it's done. Then I'll judge whether I'm interested.

- Regular weights are free. Implication is that other weights will be paid. That's fine. I'm happy to pay for fonts. But I'm unlikely to try a font in earnest without bold and italics.

Sorry if this comes off as harsh. I wish you the best with this!

I find the "i" quite excruciating to look at.

Also would like to see more examples, say including this deep math.

There's no Greek in there, so that's unfortunately another skip for me. I know most people won't care, but at least try for a WGL4 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Glyph_List_4) charset! All Greek-derived alphabets (Greek, Latin, Cyrillic) have very similar characteristics (unlike other writing systems such as Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese or Korean), and it should be much easier to expand your system to cover those.

EDIT: As many people have said, the "custom Python engine" would be far more interesting than the font itself.

Nice work!

Your documentation should definitely list the Unicode code points / glyphs covered, for people to get an idea which scripts are supported.

Also, the repository has a LICENSE file with the MIT license text, but the actual font file (.ttf) embeds the information that it's licensed under SIL Open Font License 1.1. One of these two pieces of information needs to be corrected.

Calla the "a" in other fonts fugly, does that with the lowercase "i"... Something about living in glass houses maybe.

Could you share more information on this custom python procedural engine?

Is this related: https://www.paratype.com/fonts/pt/xenia ?

I would suggest making the screenshot with the font at different sizes. They first thing I want is to have an approximation of how it will look at small sizes.

There is a name collision with the Xenia emulator for the Xbox 360. https://xenia.jp/

Does it emulate an XBOX 360?

I'm not a particular fan of this font. But I highly appreciate the systemic approach, the uniform aesthetics, and, most of all, the attitude: if something is unsatisfactory, build your own. Additionally, share with the world.

I tried this font out but had issues with the terminal in VS code.

"a" and "o" are way too similar, sorry. It's a pet peeve of mine.

I love it, just switched my terminal over to it from Monaco.

Why do this rather than just using METAFONT/METAPOST/METATYPE1?

Nice variant to the otherwise sharper or edgier mono fonts (pardon my ignorance for terminology). Personally it feels too "girly" for my taste. Nothing wrong with that - just a personal preference. I'm sure others will like it. Reminds me of wwii-era typewriter fonts and it also has a touch of "comic sans" to it. Thanks for sharing.

is this bait?