Hacker News: cormullion

New comment by cormullion in "U+237C ⍼ Is Azimuth"

cormullion — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:52:55 +0000

a single font can contain a maximum of about 65000 glyphs, but there are over 150000 defined Unicode glyphs, so a single font of last resort isn’t possible, unfortunately. Complete coverage would require multiple fonts.

New comment by cormullion in "Show HN: Xenia – A monospaced font built with a custom Python engine"

cormullion — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 17:58:32 +0000

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

https://namecheck.fontdata.com/

New comment by cormullion in "Downloadable movie posters from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s"

cormullion — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 17:11:27 +0000

The poster for Colossus:Forbin was very disappointing. The title sequence graphics for the movie were great - but the poster doesn’t show a computer at all, although the movie is all about them.

New comment by cormullion in "Do LLMs identify fonts?"

cormullion — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 16:51:10 +0000

I suspect that few professional (paid for) adverts use any fonts from dafont.com, and many fonts would anyway be unavailable to ordinary users. The current font recogniser programs are usually trained on commercially available fonts

New comment by cormullion in "Desktop Publishing Tools That Didn't Make It (2022)"

cormullion — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 20:47:52 +0000

Interleaf rose and fell spectacularly. Writing the entire user interface code in Common Lisp was an interesting feature.

New comment by cormullion in "Prince's special custom-font symbol floppy disks (2016)"

cormullion — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 09:43:20 +0000

Unicode doesn’t allow any logos or “personal characters” so it wouldn’t be accepted for inclusion…

New comment by cormullion in "Show HN: Helixdb – Open-source vector-graph database for AI applications (Rust)"

cormullion — Tue, 13 May 2025 19:33:24 +0000

perhaps it’s a homage to the famous Helix database (see Wikipedia)

New comment by cormullion in "Atkinson Hyperlegible Font"

cormullion — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 12:21:53 +0000

There is some research which suggests that the human brain “learns” to read an unfamiliar font reasonably fluently after about 30 minutes of use, and that recognition continues to improve with continued use. The well-known saying “we read best what we read most” suggests that a font itself contributes only partly towards readability - your personal habits and experience are also significant.

New comment by cormullion in "Server Mono: A Typeface Inspired by Typewriters, Apple's SF Mono, and CLIs"

cormullion — Mon, 12 Aug 2024 15:42:36 +0000

Font seems to not include the '<', '>', or '=' characters. I sympathize with font designers, there are so many glyphs you have to stare at - hundred if not thousands - for days and weeks on end; eventually you get tired of seeing them...

New comment by cormullion in "Windsor Typeface (2018)"

cormullion — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:38:38 +0000

> If you’re wondering why there’s a certain genre of notable in-use of Windsor that’s missing from this review, it isn’t due to oversight—it’s quite intentional.

New comment by cormullion in "Contour: Modern and fast terminal emulator"

cormullion — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 18:07:01 +0000

Overall I think Wezterm has the best font support (and the best support).

New comment by cormullion in "What every software developer must know about Unicode in 2023"

cormullion — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 14:28:35 +0000

It’s not pleasant to read. Strange, since Tonsky is the curator of the Fira Code font, and would presumably be interested in presentation

New comment by cormullion in "B612 Font Family"

cormullion — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 11:48:12 +0000

I think these “ink traps” might be effective on low resolution displays. But yes, those parentheses indicate it’s not a coding font.

New comment by cormullion in "New Bézier curves for vector graphics"

cormullion — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 20:08:48 +0000

Fortunately fonts usually don't contain perfect circles anyway, because the designer will optically correct any circles so that they don't appear to bulge. Kabel is the closest font I found with circular formas; LineTo's Circular is also quite close but slightly taller than wider.

New comment by cormullion in "Owen Gingerich, Astronomer Who Saw God in the Cosmos, Dies at 93"

cormullion — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 21:28:50 +0000

Only using words, I expect. For example Dennis Rawlins often addressed Owen Gingerich in his publications... eg http://www.dioi.org/sca.htm

New comment by cormullion in "For How Long Can You Keep Using an Intel Mac?"

cormullion — Sun, 14 May 2023 19:39:22 +0000

My 2008 iMac plays Apple Music in the kitchen at breakfast. It got a new power supply for its 10th birthday...

New comment by cormullion in "SI Units of Simile"

cormullion — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 14:00:33 +0000

The UK magazine New Scientist has been collecting occurrences of strange units in newspapers for years, and people often write in with new ones.

https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg18725070-900-incompati...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133562-700-the-race...

I also remember length "measured in worms laid end to end", and volume "measured in cups of tea".

New comment by cormullion in "Modern Mono"

cormullion — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 19:31:35 +0000

Another good comparison site:

https://devfonts.gafi.dev

New comment by cormullion in "Wakamai Fondue, the tool that answers the question “what can my font do?”"

cormullion — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 17:18:41 +0000

don't know, but these Kaktovik numerals were added for Unicode 15 (released September 2022) so it would be a font updated in the last 3 months...

New comment by cormullion in "Show HN: Pole Clock, a single 24h clock with multiple timezones"

cormullion — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 15:50:13 +0000

Get it added to the collection at https://24hourtime.info/2022/07/13/the-sun-clock/