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?
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
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.
I repeat: tastes are tastes.
For me Consolas is wonderful in print but I can’t not even read emails set in this font. I need condensed monospaced without interline just like PragmataPro. It's my taste and I'm sure to don't be the one with this taste.
PS the smiley is intentionally cut off. It's the best possible compromise I found to keep it recognizable also at lower sizes
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.
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.
I agree. Most modern OS monospace fonts (Consolas, Monaco, Ubuntu Mono) are more than enough for any kind of programming. I don't really see the benefit of going out and trying new fonts. IMHO font size and color highlighting (color schemes?) play a much bigger role in making my work on a text editor be faster/better.
Of course, it's a matter of personal taste, I did see one guy using Arial as a font on his text editor once...
I agree. I'm one of those people who is very picky about their fonts, and I can't recall ever paying over $10 for a font for my own, personal, non-design related needs. In my case, it's due to the fact that I have poor eyesight, so having the right font can really make a big difference, but there are probably thousands of free/low-cost options out there.
It was hard to find a monospace font that looked great at larger sizes (14pt), but in the end I settled on Luxi Mono (http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/Luxi-Mono). It actually doesn't look that great in their previews, but renders much more smoothly in my editor. This makes me think that the operating system/rendering engine probably plays a bigger role.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry, perhaps it was my fault by starting on the criticism. It was just meant to be an honest observation.
I think the font looks great and I appreciate the effort and time it took to create this font. However I see it more as an art piece. Just like an artist might have painstakingly created a body of work for 5 years, just the effort put into it, makes it impressive. To someone (a collector, a gallery) the piece might be worth $200,000, to me though, it might be or worth $0, just because I don't like it or I am shopping for utilitarian things at the moment. "Would this piece help me code faster?" kind of reasoning. So maybe it is just the wrong market.
There might also be a luxury market out there for fonts, someone who has the latest and greatest set-up and has deep pockets who just needs something extra ? A book publisher? An OS vendor?
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.
[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.
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?
I mentioned you offer of a discounted license for all contributors if the font isn't open-sourced, and that offer is explicitly stated on the project page. I'm not doubting your trustworthiness at all!
I believe I've been fair in evaluating your decision to sell on IndieGogo instead of Kickstarter. At the same time, you're going to need 22,000 contributions of $10 to open-source your font. That's a non-trivial number, but you're guaranteed to earn money for your hard work because you posted on IndieGogo.
I wish you the best of luck! I can't afford to help you out, but I'd like to analyze your choice of marketplace so other designers can follow your example.
Sorry for being anecdotal, but I've often seen people buy something after failing to pirate it. But whether somebody has uploaded a font for illegal downloading or not should not be able change its fair market value IMHO.
In reality it does, and that is why the market's reaction may be just as unfair as up-front payments. (And I think your initial reply was related to fairness, correct me if I'm wrong.)
Indie music can always fall back on giving away tunes to support a touring and merchandising play, but someone that puts years into a font only to see it pirated isn't exactly given the opportunity to rent a tour bus.
I think that if he can make it work, he deserves our encouragement.
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.
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... . 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.
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!
> 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?
The amount isn't too far off I don't think. I'm no font designer, but four man years (including overhead, etc...) isn't insane, nor is that figure off for expected salary.
That said, I'm very mixed on this kind of "ransomware" development. If you want to share, share. If you don't, don't. But front-loading the costs of your proprietary software product on people who actually want free software is borderline unethical, IMHO. Obviously people are free to pay if they want to, but if you really want to support free development there are better targets.
he actually elaborated on that and said that after fees and taxes it would be $96000 and that it would last him for about 800 days to design every charackter.
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.
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)
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.
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..
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.
It seems to me that the 43% rate is excessive on something that, as others have pointed out, is not a large income ($96,000 over 4 years -> $24k/year) - I don't know of any country where you'd pay that tax rate so soon. I assume this would happen if he gets all the money in one hit - so to me, it's not really "tax evasion" in the nasty sense to set up a company etc such that he pays tax on 4 years of $24k rather than one year of $96k. And personally, I'd find it more attractive if slightly less of the money wasn't going to go to the Italian government.
(I am not actually an expert in matters of the Italian tax system, so I guess it's possible that they all pay 43% tax on all income, although goodness knows how the country could be in such dire straits if that's the case)
A coin has two faces. Remember what the government gives you in exchange for "just under half" of what customers pay. It may still be not enough bang for your buck, but don't forget the bang altogether.
In the UK someone would start a company, and be an employee of that company with a wage, and make themselves the only shareholder, and then an accountant would say "pay yourself some dividends now".
At least that's what people used to do, but I guess it's been stopped now.
We have a similar entity here in the States, it is called and S-Corp. It is designed for single owner businesses and does allow the owner to dodge some tax burden. Specifically the double taxation on income that a single owner would receive if there where under the rules of a C-Corp as well as some unemployment and FICA.
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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I submitted to all the big companies computer related, Apple included. They ignored PragmataPro™.
For this I need of your understanding and your support because I'm sure you know better than them what's a good programming font.
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.
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.
This is obviously personal preference and opinion and all of that, but that's the whole point of discussion, so:
if (something) {
something();
} else {
something_else();
}
vs.
if (something)
{
something();
}
else
{
something_else();
}
To me, the first one is chaotic. It's not so bad like that, but throw in a loop (as well as the external function declaration) and it's a complete mess.
The second one is orderly. Block separation is very clear, and each brace is matched by an equal.
IMO, if you need to worry about how many lines of code fit on your screen, it's probably time to refactor (or upgrade from a netbook).
You might have a point, but your arguments are inconsistent with each other; You say
> IMO, if you need to worry about how many lines of code fit on your screen, it's probably time to refactor (or upgrade from a netbook).
But also:
> Block separation is very clear, and each brace is matched by an equal.
Block separation is equally clear in the first example (same column means same block), and if your IDE can't show you matches if you're lost, it's time to upgrade from ed or edlin.
Also,
> I might be crazy though, because I write "int* foo" instead of "int \foo" [edit: \ should be asterisk. can't make it show one, though]
You are indeed crazy, or at least misguided and confusing. because
int* a, b;
implies a and b or both of type "int* ", but actually, a is of type "int* " and b is of type "int". The second form is visually consistent, because:
int *a, b;
Says "*a" is of type "int", and also "b" is of type "int".
I feel perhaps you are missing my point -- you are talking about block separation and vertical space, I am talking about grouping of logical units.
I agree with your points for functions, (most)loops, switches, and so in, but for if/else try/catch/finally do/while an other multiblock statements, I think it helps to have some convention to group them, other than indent level. The blocks depend on each other, not just are in proximity.
I would never do:
for (a;b();a++) {
stuff();
} if (test) {
...
}
because the if and the for are not parts of the same logical chunk. Nor would I do:
...
} else {
catchall();
} if (new_test()) {
...
Again because a new if is new logical chunk.
Basically, it isn't about block delineation or about vertical space, its about grouping logical units that have multiple blocks at the same nesting level.
I use a newline and (sometimes) comments for that, so for example two unrelated if statements will have a blank line and some sort of comment between them.
I think it would be really interesting to see how people's code style preferences translated to how they design things (or prefer designs). I like minimalism and lots of whitespace in designs, and it definitely translates to how I best read code.
Ah, that's exactly the thing I try to avoid. Presumably you're going to use those variables, right? So, unless there's truly an issue (conditional assignment that is too complex for a ternary) why not declare them at the point of use? C99 lets us do that, there's no reason to keep the C89 habits.
Meaning:
int* foo = whatever;
// do some stuff with foo, now we need bar
int* bar = whatever;
Outside of a for loop, I would never do two assignments on the same line, so it isn't an issue.
If it really has to be done like that, I just suck it up in that case. C has its warts.
But it still looks cleaner to put your variables first and your code after. It's like in a play, you mention which characters are going to be in the scene before you get to the dialogue.
Conversely, I find the first example far easier to read. The second one is, to me, too "broken up" which completely interrupts the flow. To each their own. :)
Because in the 90s textmode screens looked like that. Except back in those days it was done to be able to fit 80 characters on a line instead of just 40.
Today it enables programmers to fit WAY more characters on a line.
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.
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 :)
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...
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_ .
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?