This has been itching me ever since I installed Leopard. Lucida Grande, the ‘default’ font for much of OS X’s UI has been ‘upgraded’ to version 6.0.

This wouldn’t be a problem (or even noticeable) if the new Lucida Grande hadn’t replaced the glyph for the hellenic character epsilon with the ugliest, most striking version ever to grace my Mac. Since Hellenic is my mother tongue, I frequently use it and was immediately striken by the new glyph although it took a while for me to realise what it was that bothered me. Take a look at the following two samples of Lucida Grande 5.0 (from Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ 10.4) and Lucida Grande 6.0 (from Mac OS X ‘Leopard’ 10.5).

Old:

New:

Ugly? Very much so. I suspect they changed it so that those that use Hellenic for mathematical/physics notation can get a more ‘appropriate’ epsilon. To them I say: Use LaTeX for Typography’s Sake! At least the rest of the font is still as beautiful as ever.

Μετά από αρκετό καιρό αποφάσισα να κάνω κάποιες αισθητικές αλλαγές στο cosmix.org. Δεν είναι κάτι το ιδιαίτερο ώστε να αξίζει αναφορά εδώ, όμως παρατήρησα κάτι που με προβλημάτισε.

Κοιτώντας στο Web για γραμματοσειρές πέτυχα την Mason Sans Greek Alternative. Τη γραμματοσειρά μπορείτε να τη δείτε στο νεο λογότυπο του cosmix.org. Ψάχνωντας λοιπόν τη βρήκα στο site της Cannibal. Όπως και στα περισσότερα site του είδους, στο site αυτό μπορείς να δείς διάφορες γραμματοσειρές, τιμες κλπ. Η Cannibal πρωτοπορεί μην έχωντας δικτυακό ‘κατάστημα’. Με άλλα λόγια, βλέπεις, απογοητεύεσαι με τις τιμές αλλά δε μπορείς να αγοράσεις, θες δε θες.
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A few weeks ago I stumbled across Inconsolata, Raph Levien’s monospaced font and it has since become one of my favourites. The font is clearly inspired by Consolas, the new monospaced font designed by Lucas de Groot for Microsoft’s Windows Vista Operating System. Inconsolata borrows several characteristics of that font, but is longer in height (Consolas is too ’rounded’ for my taste, even though it is by far one of the most æsthetically pleasing monospaced fonts I’ve ever seen) and, as the Inconsolata web page explains, borrows from a wide variety of fonts and styles.

There are a number of reasons I am not using Inconsolata on my development machines yet. First, it is completely devoid of any Hellenic characters, which for me is a problem as, more often than not, I come across them. Second, I prefer monospaced fonts where zero (0) is slashed as opposed to just thinner than the capital O. Obviously, Raph disagrees. While my latter ‘complaint’ is not that important, the former is.

I can only hope that in the future Raph will extend Inconsolata to support the Hellenic alphabet too.

Raph states that the completion of this font is sponsored by TUG and that donating to TUG would help finance the design and implementation of other fonts by him. If you’re interested in seeing this amazing monospaced font finished and possibly extended to support Hellenic drop Raph an email (check his page for details). Also, consider donating to TUG’s DevFund.