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
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.
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?
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!
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)
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).
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.
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.
[+] [-] stdbrouw|14 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] fabrizioschiavi|14 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] to3m|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] prototypef|14 years ago|reply
Of course, it's a matter of personal taste, I did see one guy using Arial as a font on his text editor once...
[+] [-] kellishaver|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mrleinad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] achompas|14 years ago|reply
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.
[1] http://hyperakt.com/
[2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-cup-...
[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.
[+] [-] fabrizioschiavi|14 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] yan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fabrizioschiavi|14 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] hipsterelitist|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajross|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] trin_|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antidaily|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shin_lao|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runn1ng|14 years ago|reply
http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html
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.
[+] [-] DanBC|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hellweaver666|14 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] libria|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shin_lao|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fabrizioschiavi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] struppi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
But whenever they say my money will go towards a discount (or a charity) if the deal fails, I never go for it.
I'm not sure I've ever seen one succeed in that situation, actually.
[+] [-] tyw|14 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] moonboots|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krevis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fabrizioschiavi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp332|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yankcrime|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natesm|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beagle3|14 years ago|reply
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
I write 4 times as much context on in the same space. Similarly, where (I assume) you'd write: I write: or even as a one liner: Even if you are not used to this style, I don't think you can claim it is unreadable. Just different.[+] [-] tripzilch|14 years ago|reply
Today it enables programmers to fit WAY more characters on a line.
It's like, the perfect oneliner font.
[+] [-] sophacles|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swah|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] micheljansen|14 years ago|reply
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 :)
[+] [-] fabrizioschiavi|14 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] acheron|14 years ago|reply
This one looks good too, and maybe it'd be better than Proggy or one of the others around, but I don't think it's $220,000 better.
[+] [-] aggarwalachal|14 years ago|reply
If I made a font like this, I would rather keep it as a donation, as the font was developed out of free will.
BTW I use Menlo...
[+] [-] chadnickbok|14 years ago|reply
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_ .
[+] [-] bjornsteffanson|14 years ago|reply