What are some less known or underused open source fonts?

What are some less known or underused open source fonts?

159 points · 43 comments · view on lemmy.world

43 Comments

ratel@mander.xyz · 52 pts · 276d (14 replies)

I love this hyperlegible one from the Braille Institute: https://www.brailleinstitute.org/freefont/

shyguyblue@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 276d

I'm going to see if I can get this on my Kobo. Thank you for the link!

2910000@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 275d (1 reply)

Ooh there's a monospace version too

DetachablePianist@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 275d

this is the way

TheBat@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 276d
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chelatna@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 276d
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brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 276d

I use this, it's good.

HubertManne@piefed.social · 1 pts · 275d (1 reply)

do any applications contain them by default? As much as I like the fonts my email is to much a price to pay given the fonts I use are fine.

ratel@mander.xyz · 1 pts · 274d

You can get it from Google fonts which means you can easily download / import it into another application if that helps. One of the other replies also linked another source. I just provided the official link because they have a nice rationale on the design choices.

randombullet@programming.dev · 1 pts · 274d

It doesn't take my duck.com alias

Pirate@feddit.org · 1 pts · 275d

Came looking for this comment! It’s my favorite font of all time. So clean and legible.

Lemminary@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 276d (3 replies)

Do I really need to give them an email to download? Why?

BurgerBaron@piefed.social · 5 pts · 275d

They're part of my Linux distro's repo. ttf-atkinson-hyperlegible and otf-atkinson-hyperlegible.

Windows mirror: https://font.download/font/atkinson-hyperlegible

trk@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 274d

You can just type any old bollocks in there and it reveals the download links.

ratel@mander.xyz · 1 pts · 275d

IDK I'm not affiliated with them but maybe use a throwaway email alias.

coreray00@discuss.online · 33 pts · 276d (3 replies)

Shout out to 0xProto! Texture healing in a monospaced font is super cool!

tuckerm@feddit.online · 5 pts · 276d

Interesting! I hadn't heard of this before, I'll have to check it out.

lime@feddit.nu · 3 pts · 275d

and actually useful ligatures to boot! neat.

Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 275d

Rad!

mechanismatic@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 276d (1 reply)

There are too many to mention since there's so much out there.

You can go to a font website like dafont and perform a search for a font or browse different themes/styles and specify in the results that you want Public domain / GPL / OFL fonts.

Almost all of my fonts are released under an attribution license, so they're free for commercial use and remixing.

https://michaelwmoss.com/typefaces

SpaceXplorer_8042@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 276d

Definitely a lot of fonts I'd very much like using whenever I need a new font next. Thanks!

chunes@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 276d

Agave. My favorite monospace/programming font. What I like best about it is how the baseline isn't where the descenders begin. Makes it look unique in a nice way.

SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 275d (1 reply)

Merriweather is great for longer texts. I use it in all book reader apps.

Anonymous Pro is my coding font of choice.

pastermil@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 275d

I second the Anonymous Pro!

vivalapivo@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 275d (1 reply)

For those who love comic sans I might have bad news: you might be borderline dyslexic.

Switching to OpenDyslexic 3 helps

TheUnicornOfPerfidy@feddit.uk · 9 pts · 275d

OpenDyslexic is less good for most dyslexics than you think. It's based on some ideas of what might be useful rather than specific evidence. I recomend Sylexiad instead. Particularly Sylexiad Sans rather than Serif, but it's all about finding what works best for you.

tuckerm@feddit.online · 4 pts · 276d

M+ 1m has been my daily monospaced font ever since I found it, which is about eight years now. I don't see it come up often when people talk about monospaced fonts.

amos@mander.xyz · 4 pts · 275d
lucg@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 275d

I see lots of links here but no reasons why each is underused or anything.

Look, I'm a simple person, what I ask of a font is:

  • differentiate your symbols — I'm talking 1, l, I, and i with more than a single pixel difference at 11pt 90DPI, and the 0 should be clearly less round than O
  • be readable. No extra thinness, fancy swirls... look at any default font as an example (Arial or whatever), or most people's custom web font as a counter-example
  • proportionally spaced. I like \thinspace as thousand separator and I cannot lie
  • indefinitely usable (for example as part of a game) after a single purchase that I can do as a consumer. Or free/donationware of course

A very tall order I know. So far I've reviewed a bunch of fonts (I wasn't procrastinating why do you ask) and found PT Sans is the best option I've seen, so I'm using it, but I hate its Q. It's basically an O with a tilde below it. Any better options if all you want is clarity and normalcy?

Edit: near the bottom of the replies there's Hyperlegible. Somehow I had read over that. Seems to check the boxes! I'll be looking at this closer on my computer later.

Adderbox76@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 275d

I don't know it it's underused, but my go to for years gas been League Spartan from The League of Moveable Type

MantisToboggon@lazysoci.al · 3 pts · 276d (1 reply)

Comic sans.

tuckerm@feddit.online · 4 pts · 276d

Literally the only thing we miss out on when ditching Windows.

ace_garp@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 275d

Muli !

My favourite

Search at http://openfontlibrary.com/

theherk@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 275d
JetpackJackson@feddit.org · 2 pts · 276d (2 replies)

Ärzte Sans (edit: missed the open source part. I can't verify that)

watson387@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 276d (1 reply)
JetpackJackson@feddit.org · 2 pts · 276d

Huh til theres an aur package, I just plunked it in my fonts directory

kshade@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 275d

It's freeware not open source but I like Monofur. Might not be the most beautiful font but I find it very legible and the distinction between similar characters is quite good. It's available in the Debian/Ubuntu repositories too.

SpaceXplorer_8042@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 276d

I'd say several fonts on Google Fonts (the only place I know lol) are pretty good. I don't see them mentioned anywhere and I'm not a font enthusiast per se, so I'd call them less known. Some of my favourite - Courier Pro, Doto, Sono, SUSE Mono, Josefin Slab, and Martian Mono.

And a couple others default on my Windows PC that I like: Bookman Old Style, Yu Gothic (Fun fact - this font was used by the hit anime Neon Genesis Evangelion for their english title cards) and wierdly enough, Segoe UI. I love that Windows 8 aesthetic it brought.

blurb@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 274d
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Wispy2891@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 276d

I really like Open Sans

angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 275d

Comic Neue

guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip · 1 pts · 275d

This doesn’t add anything to the post, so, sorry, but this is a really good question! Thanks for contributing!

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 275d

What open source don't should I use for high compatability and legibility?

jordanlee91@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 219d

Found this font identifier tool that works pretty well https://whatthefont.app/

jordanlee91@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 219d

https://whatthefont.app/ Found this font identifier tool that works pretty well