l don’t undersand why we Iive in a worId where capital I and Iowercase l are allowed to Iook near identical. PeopIe are paid to design and seIect fonts and they have aII agreed on this Iudicrous convention.
Why has this happened? And is there anything I can do about it as an individuaI or as part of a coIIective?
I can’t even do thorn-master Sxan’s thing and insert a character code because U+026A, ɪ, is too damn small.
ᎳᎻᎪᎢ ᎢᎻᎬ ᎻᎬᏞᏞ? Ꮯꮋꭼꭱoꮶꭼꭼ ꮮꭺꮯꮶꮪ “ɪ” ꭲoo?!
Ꮲꭼꭱꮋꭺꮲꮪ ꭲꮋɪꮪ ꮃoꭱꮶꮪ: 𐊦𐙫𐠳ⵊ
ⵊ’m not sure…
𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬，ｏｒ ｉｎ ＦＵＬＬ ＷＩＤＴＨ！
AƖternativeƖy, Ɩet’s differentiate the "Ɩ"s
What is this wizardry?
Given the confused nature of your post, best look up Unicode, serif and sans-serif before reading on…
First line is mostly Cherokee script, whose alphabet goes ᎠᎡᎢᎣᎤᎥᎦᎧᎨᎱᎪᎫᎬᎭᎮᎯ… Many letters resemble English serif ones: ᎪᏴᏟᎠᎬᎰᏀᎻᎥᎫᏦᏞᎷᎨᎾᏢᏩᎡᏚᎢᏌᏙᎳᏯᎩᏃ. With some clever synonym selection (
the fuckthe hell) and a replacement for the compromised ones like O or (unfortunately also) I, one can use it as a serif typeface wiith small caps.The only uppercase, explicitly serif I in Unicode are “special fonts” (Latin, sometimes Greek letter sets) accessible via an online converter or Android app. Some are meant for formulas where serif is the norm, therefore there’s
- 𝖬𝖺𝗍𝗁 𝗌𝖺𝗇𝗌
- may look like Helvetica or indistinguishable from the surrounding sans(-serif) font
- 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗱
- 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘤
- 𝙈𝙖𝙩𝙝 𝙨𝙖𝙣𝙨 𝙗𝙤𝙡𝙙 𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙘
- 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐟
- closest to forced serif typeface: as mentioned above, no “Math serif” exists
- 𝑀𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑐 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑓
- the “h” came first (Planck constant, always italics) and looks different in some fonts
- 𝑴𝒂𝒕𝒉 𝒃𝒐𝒍𝒅 𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒄 𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒇
- ℳ𝒶𝓉𝒽 𝓈𝒸𝓇𝒾𝓅𝓉
- 𝓜𝓪𝓽𝓱 𝓼𝓬𝓻𝓲𝓹𝓽 𝓫𝓸𝓵𝓭
- 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔥 𝔉𝔯𝔞𝔨𝔱𝔲𝔯
- 𝕸𝖆𝖙𝖍 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖐𝖙𝖚𝖗 𝕭𝖔𝖑𝖉
- 𝙼𝚊𝚝𝚑 𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚌𝚎
- 𝕄𝕒𝕥𝕙 𝕕𝕠𝕦𝕓𝕝𝕖-𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕠𝕜𝕖
- completing the alphabet of letters denoting number sets like ℕ, ℤ, ℚ, ℝ, ℂ…
Then, there’s
- Ｆｕｌｌｗｉｄｔｈ
- width of CJK characters, uniquely includes some punctuation
- Ⓒⓘⓡⓒⓛⓔⓓ
- 🅝🅔🅖🅐🅣🅘🅥🅔 🅒🅘🅡🅒🅛🅔🅓
- 🅂🅀🅄🄰🅁🄴🄳
- 🅽🅴🅶🅰🆃🅸🆅🅴 🆂🆀🆄🅰🆁🅴🅳
- A, B and O (blood types) may be red (emoji presentation)
- 🇷🇪🇬🇮🇴🇳🇦🇱 🇮🇳🇩🇮🇨🇦🇹🇴🇷🇸
- “flag parts”, vary wildly by platform, usually blue
And ᴘsᴇᴜᴅᴏᴀʟᴘʜᴀʙᴇᴛs ʟɪᴋᴇ sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘs ʜᴇʀᴇ, made by repurposing other characters. Often incomplete, like my Cherokee attempt at serif. Explained on the QAZ website linked above.
Also, I used
- U+2D4A ⵊ TIFINAGH LETTER YAZH
- U+10833 𐠳 CYPRIOT SYLLABLE WE
- U+1066B 𐙫 LINEAR A SIGN A319
- U+102A6 𐊦 CARIAN LETTER LD
- U+0196 Ɩ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER IOTA
- unlike the above 4
Is, almost guaranteed to be supported by the default font on any reasonably modern platform
- unlike the above 4
I’m looking forward to the year 𑃦𑃰𑃟𑃰/𞄡𞅀𞄬𞅀/𞄕𞅀𞄧𞅀, the next one whose number can be approximated in a whimsical way by characters in the Sora Sompeng and Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong scripts, respectively. The number of devices supporting them will have grown by then, too.
For yall’s information, nothing typed with those characters will be searchable in the browser, an app, or via website’s search — unless apps and websites take special measures to account for such tricks, by keeping a copy of the text normalized to the regular English alphabet.
Or accessible via screen reader…
The “normalization” of pseudoalphabets is tricky, the normal transliteration of the “alphabet” I made with Cherokee syllabics is “Goyvtliagvhonahmivgutsotlelugenatlvwaeduisadolayagino”. (See also Faux Cyrillic (such as СУЯЇLLЇС, actually pronounced “suyaillis”) and !grssk@lemmy.world (faux Greek, such as GRΣΣΚ, actually pronounced “grssk”) for other misused alphabets.) It is necessary to maintain a database of homoglyphs and other lookalikes for proper filtration of τ℮אϯ Ιίᛕᥱ ᵼℎⅰ⟆.
Also, commercial platforms know it’s a way to bypass filters and tend to outright block comments/emails/etc. that use Unicode in unintended ways.
- 𝖬𝖺𝗍𝗁 𝗌𝖺𝗇𝗌
A mystical art called, “different fonts”.
No one’s gotten into the actual “why” that I’ve seen. This goes back to the early days of the internet, or even computers, really. In the ’80s and ’90s computer screens were much lower resolution than today. The finer details of traditional typefaces were often lost. There was a big push to simplify and optimize for the screen. This also impacted the early days of the web. I remember the advice for amateurs was to design your pages for small resolutions screens, windows that were only 800x600 or even 640x480, which would work on a standard definition TV.
I remember the defaults in web browsers in the late ’90s were often badly spaced Times New Roman. People would try to code better fonts when they could define them, but they were still largely in the mindset of using fonts optimized for low-resolution screens. Worse, in the early days there were no web fonts that could be imbedded in web pages, so you’d have to try to pick a font likely to be on your readers’ computers, which usually weren’t great.
Nowadays basically everyone’s devices have high-resolution screens, and we have embedded fonts, so we don’t have to live our lives that way. Still, that decades-old advice echoes through in modern designs. And there are a lot of bad free fonts out there, with people unwilling to pay for a font or put in the effort to find a good free one.
As for what you can do? You can’t force everyone to change, but you can be the change you want to see. Encourage people to learn about good typography, which is not just fonts! Make smarter choices in the written work you produce yourself to show others the way. And to get by for now, change the default fonts the devices you use if possible, or individual apps or web browsers. You can even install browser extensions like Stylus to replace a page’s style sheet with a different, better one.
This all makes sense for websites but even the default android keyboard, SMS texts, general UI for things like email, etc all use the capital I.
TBF the fashion for sans-serif typefaces predates the spread of personal computing. They became popular around the sixties, with the modernist design in printing, namely in magazines. Then in the eighties sans-serif became the ‘face’ of corporate design. The nineties saw the prevalence of Times New Roman in home and office printing since printers evolved to handle fine detail and WYSIWYG. And finally the 2000s saw web design mature and switch to sans-serif again for the ‘modern’ look, plus humanist typefaces started looking nice with the higher resolutions.
Funny thing: Apple bet from the start on screens gaining high resolution, with their font rendering being true to the shapes, while Windows aligned them to the pixel grid. They probably converged now with the high-DPI screens (haven’t seen Windows on a hiDPI yet), but Windows retains the crappy quirk of the font sizes jumping annoyingly between sizes, namely when zooming on web sites. MacOS’ font resizing / zooming feels so nice in comparison.
If I knew how to do I’d share this to !interestingasfuck@lemmy.world
banned from the Internet
Do you know what the Internet (World Wide Web) even means here, and that this is decided by fonts, and to a lesser extent by Unicode? You can use a so-called 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑓 font on your website, and it’s still the default on most desktop browsers. You can even force websites to render different fonts on your browser!
I remember when typewriters often didn’t have a 1 key. You just used l (lowercase L) instead.
IlIlIlIlIl
And is there anything I can do about it…
You can choose a different font.
As you can see in the included screenshot, piefed includes a choice of fonts including one that includes I with serifs. Certainly many other apps do as well. Or you can force it at the browser level I would think.
Nice. Ok. I’ll look into that for my various apps and what nots. But don’t most webpages serve you whatever font they want and it would be a trainwreck to force a font change when the page hasn’t been designed for it?
Vast majority of webpages shouldn’t break, I’m saying that as a web programmer. I myself override fonts on a couple sites that I use regularly (namely Wikipedia). Where it might go wrong is in edge cases, e.g. small special snippets of text like captions for images, which can be designed to fit in limited space and use condensed fonts.
Not sure that browsers allow overriding all fonts on webpages (ever since sites specify specific fonts instead of just ‘serif’ and ‘sans-serif’), but there are likely extensions that can do that dynamically and forcefully. I do that via CSS in the Stylus extension, but that’s specific to particular sites and can’t work everywhere.
Basic website design is supposed to allow the user to set their own fonts and font sizes along with formatting based on screen size and orientation. Yes, a lot of pages are designed terribly and might break, but that is because they made a shitty website and not because you chose to use the internet the way it is supposed to work.
Changing out for a font that looks very similar to Ariel but with easier to differentiate capital I and lower case l should work fine.
You can set a specific font in your browser settings and force it to use that font on websites.
this is what that looks like on this page.
.you can also use stylus (a browser addon) and a userstyle for all or specific domains.
and… firefox’s “reader mode”, if available for the page, also has a basic (serif, sans, mono) font choice.
Most websites should at least support specifying a generic “serif” preference and then they pick a specific one, however you should also be able to force a local font via either browser options or extension
I don’t want I with serifs. I want I with crossbars, and optionally serifs on those crossbars.
Monaco for the win.
Monaco for the win.
Rock on.
For me, after trying many fonts the winner for easiest accurate reading is Intel One Mono.
I kinda want that font just for the {}
I find it very nice for coding and shell
I never thought to do this, and tho I’m not on piefed at the moment I just changed my “theme” in lemmyworld to “dark vaporwave” to achieve the same result.
Lol, they don’t get the joke.
This is No Stupid Questions, not Lemmy Shitpost
probably because sans serif is literally a lack of features in typography design sense which was a shortsight in computer sense.
So that we can be like
✋ Weird AI music
👉 Weird Al music 🪗Jokes aside, you’re right.
Comics commonly use all-caps fonts that do make that difference.edit: disregard that, I’m a confused person.He did a good job of enjoying the misunderstanding without being condescending. That’s so funny and also terrifying :)
I always wondered how we should distinguish between hating AI and hating Al because Al sucks.
You put Weird before Al and we know what you mean.
What if it’s Normal Al
“I’m super, thanks for asking”
Weird Al is a superb human being
For the record, less philosophical problems are caused by picking a sans-serif font with a bend on the lowercase L, than that shape for I, where everyone thinks it’s a serif, because it sometimes is
It also creates fewer philosophical problems if you distinguish between countable and uncountable adjectives. Though, I suppose that’s a less philosophical point than you made.
Dude, we live in a world where people put an S on uncountable nouns like ‘mail’.
I totally respect your attempts to help people, but ya gotta temper your expectations. ;-)
I set Atkinson Hyperlegible as my system font, to solve this and other issues.
https://www.brailleinstitute.org/freefont/
Here’s how your text renders for me in LibreWolf
Did you manually edit the font table to switch I and l around or is OP being fun today
OP was making a point that was largely only apparent if the font changed
I’ll keep it in mind. Looks like my Samsung tablet locks me to download fonts from their store and they’re not free. Fucking Samsung. And I can’t jailbreak it, either, I don’t think.
There’s exactly 4 default fonts available and the sample font text is “This font will look like this” so I don’t know if there is a properly shapped I or not.
I think you can just download the font file and put it into a special folder (is it /sdcard/fonts?) and it will show up on any Android system.
It’s possible this changed in more recent Android versions.
Well, for starters, /sdcard isn’t available on most phones for a decade or so.
Best I can do is ][
That’s how Apple marketed their second PC. Apple ][. Then I think the mid-gen upgrade was the Apple //e.
Also moz://a not too long ago
That was such an amazing style choice, any time I see it now I’m still sad they moved away from it
Hard agree. Some sans-serif fonts add a slight curve to the lowercase L, which seems like a no-brainer. But that’s just me.
Be glad you weren’t born a few hundred years ago.
Meh. That one is not too bad. It is actually distinguishable from an f when you know to look for a crossbar.
It’s ſometimes written with a half-croſsbar!
Maybe it’s time to bring it back.
It’s still in a way used in German in the ß, which is a combined long s and normal (short?) s.
or ſʒ
Il1 while similar they’re typed differently on this site tho (for us atleast)
