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

Posted by xeniafont 6 days ago

Counter74Comment43OpenOriginal

I'm an engineer who spent the last year fixing everything I hated about monofonts (especially that double-story 'a').

I built a custom Python-based procedural engine to generate the weights because I wanted more logical control over the geometry. It currently has 700+ glyphs and deep math support.

Regular weight is free for the community. I'm releasing more weights based on interest.

Comments

Comment by lemontheme 6 days ago

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!

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

hey! no i wasnt planning to charge... should i? the reason i didnt release the other weights is because i built the glyphs scaled by the width of the line... so i haven't really tested out the other "weights"... meaning, i haven't yet decided exactly what widths to set the other weights at... and that would take some time for me to do... and i would only do it if there was interest :) and its not a new github account, i just dont have any public repos https://linkedin.com/in/lorettarules im like a real person

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

i code like 18 hours a day... so i tweeked the font solely for myself, until it worked for me... for instance, the hashtag was super important, because i mostly code in python, so it went thru many iterations before i was happy with it... i was bored the other day and i was thinking i spent so much time on the font, i might as well let others use it, you know?

Comment by xandrius 6 days ago

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

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

Comment by TehCorwiz 6 days ago

It's just letting you dot your Ts and cross your Is. ;)

EDIT: The joke wasn't that bad. :(

Comment by Conscat 6 days ago

I liked it :3 thought it was funny

Comment by LoganDark 6 days ago

:3

Comment by Y_Y 6 days ago

It's like a dotted version of the false/bottom symbol from logic: ⊥̇

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

ya... the i was a tough one to do... because its a trade off you know? between having honor the fact that its a slim character and having it match the look of the others... this was incredibly difficult to do because of the fact that the characters have to align correctly - say if an i is between two M's - and also sandwiched between two T's... its really difficult... but let me know if you come up with an alternative solution!

Comment by zvr 6 days ago

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.

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

yes, im gonna fix this... honestly i didnt realize anyone would be actually interested... i've gotten really great responses... thank you so much! companies have actually been reaching out to me! im really honored thank you!

Comment by grilledchickenw 6 days ago

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

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

ya...

so i just use reportlab and i just created custom drawing classes for lines and arcs, which takes in a variable "weight" that controls the "thickness" of the line it draws...

and then after you generate the "basics" (A-z, digits and some basic shapes like dots and whatnot), almost all the remaining glyphs are just some (scaled) combination of those glyphs, in some way or another... and i made like a "map" of that...

does that make sense?

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

and you dont even need all the A-z and digits...

Comment by seized 6 days ago

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

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

i don't like the lowercase "a" because i dont understand why it looks like a backwards six... i don't understand why it has that tail on top...

Comment by ako 6 days ago

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

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

no

Comment by cormullion 4 days ago

you can use this site to check that the name you choose hasn’t already been taken:

https://namecheck.fontdata.com/

Comment by fimdomeio 6 days ago

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.

Comment by gschizas 5 days ago

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.

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

if you file a ticket or email me, i can try to get to the glyphs that you need... when i have time... thanks!

Comment by throwaway85825 6 days ago

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

Comment by _blk 6 days ago

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.

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

thank you so much!

Comment by Dwedit 6 days ago

Does it emulate an XBOX 360?

Comment by nine_k 6 days ago

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.

Comment by gknightbro 6 days ago

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

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

what kind of issues?

Comment by toyg 6 days ago

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

Comment by blittle 6 days ago

It calls out O and 0 as unambiguous. I never find an ever so slightly more narrow ellipse to be less ambiguous.

Comment by WillAdams 6 days ago

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

Comment by gucci-on-fleek 6 days ago

It's not very easy to use Metafont and its derivatives to produce a modern TrueType/OpenType font. Even the TeX Gyre fonts use FontForge [0] rather than Metafont.

[0]: https://ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/tex-gyre/source

Comment by codezero 6 days ago

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

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

thank you so much! im autistic and its soothing to me :)

Comment by codezero 5 days ago

same

Comment by xeniafont 1 day ago

released five weights

Comment by binary132 5 days ago

is this bait?

Comment by Minor49er 5 days ago

I'm not sure but I thought it was funny that the "buy me a coffee" banner is the most prominent visual on the page, dwarfing the (typo'd) example text. At least that's how it appears to me on mobile.

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

oh okay so i had chatgpt generate the readme for me... and thats just how it came out... i dont really know how to shrink the size of the buymeacoffee banner... i didnt mean for it to be so big... i just have never done anything like this... ive never gotten so much flack from releasing a free font before... sheesh

Comment by xeniafont 5 days ago

you folks are super harsh... my gosh lolz

Comment by codezero 5 days ago

Hacker News is notoriously so. People who don't make things have a lot of opinions about things. I appreciate your work and hope the random negative folks here don't detract you from continuing to create and build.

Comment by xeniafont 4 days ago

oh thats really nice of you to say... thank you codezero