Alex wrote:
> <veeg> ppl are always complaining that perl looks ugly, because of the %'s
> and @'s, but surely that's just because of the font
Which people say that perl looks ugly ? I would think it's people who are
new to Perl and therefore think it doesn't look like (a) natural language,
(b) mathsy algebraic stuff or (c) another computer language they know (I
know Perl looks like C and Sed and Awk and so on, but it's got enough other
stuff to mean it *doesn't* look like them too). Therefore it looks like
random characters to them. I'm not sure having a nice font for those
characters would improve that ?
Still be interesting to see the results though.
Cheers
Matt
-----Original Message-----
From: alex [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000 10:59 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: perl font
[watch the cross post]
While in Milan I came up with the idea of a font designed for hacking and
displaying Perl code.
Just raised it on the london perl mongers irc channel. At some point we
should start up a list to discuss this further, but for now I'll collate
comments and ideas.
Anyway, here's the (short) discussion:
<veeg> has anyone thought of designing a perl font?
<acme> hey, good idea
<veeg> ppl are always complaining that perl looks ugly, because of the %'s
and @'s, but surely that's just because of the font
<acme> you mean so that all perl stuff looks consistent right?
<veeg> well there's that, and also making it easier on the eye
<veeg> just taking helvetica or something and making the %$@ characters
cleaner would be a start
<veeg> maybe i should ask the list
<steve_> veeg thats quite a good idea .. I believe you can display fonts
with metafont?
<davorg> it needs to be a fixed width font
<veeg> davorg: good point
<veeg> google for metafont
<veeg> dipsy, google for metafont
<dipsy> veeg: Google says metafont is
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/fonts-faq/metafont-list/ or
http://www.landfield.com/ftp/faqs/fonts-faq/metafont-list or
http://homepages.tu-darmstadt.de/~st002556/texfonts/liste.html
<dipsy> okay, veeg.
<dipsy> veeg: Google says metafont is
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/fonts-faq/metafont-list/ or
http://www.landfield.com/ftp/faqs/fonts-faq/metafont-list or
http://homepages.tu-darmstadt.de/~st002556/texfonts/liste.html
<acme> i was thinking the way the apple font is garamond condensed - we
could have a Perl font, increasing our brand yadayadayada
<veeg> steve_: what's metafont? :)
<veeg> acme: and if we could make perl look nicer to the untrained eye, it
would also improve our brand
<acme> so how would you make @ and % nicer then?
<veeg> @ could be a simple, loose spiral
<acme> debian logo / dreamcast like?
<veeg> I guess
<steve_> http://www.gnu.org/graphics/hurd_mf.html
<veeg> steve_: ta
--- steve_ is now known as itz_steve
<veeg> itz_steve: ah, looks good
<veeg> acme: we'd obviously need to come up with several contenders and
vote upon it
<itz_steve> looks quite time consuming as well
<veeg> come up with characters, and let people implement them in their
favourite fonts
<veeg> and endorse a particular font if we find a lot of agreement
<veeg> can someone easily set up a mailing list for this?
<davorg> can't you use penderel for the mailing list?
<veeg> davorg: I don't know, I've been out of the country
--- You have new mail (24 messages, 195366 bytes total).
* veeg shows davorg his swamped mailbox :)
<davorg> :)
<acme> is penderel up and installed with everything then?
<veeg> well I'll raise it on the london.pm list then, and get more ideas
<davorg> don't think penderel has any mailing list software on it yet
