INPUT
===============
Input is a font family designed for computer programming, data, and text composition. It was designed by David Jonathan Ross between 2012 and 2014 and published by The Font Bureau. It contains a wide array of styles so you can fine-tune the typography that works best in your editing environment. Beyond the 168 styles, there is also a command line tool that allows you to customize line-spacing and certain letterforms within the fonts.
You can find more information about the fonts at [http://input.fontbureau.com].
Please note: The entire Input font family is available at no cost for private use, which includes uses on your own computer in plaintext and code. You must purchase inexpensive publishing licenses in order to use Input in print, on the web, or in any publishing context.
* Web licenses: [http://www.webtype.com/font/input-family]
* Print/desktop licenses: [http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/Input/styles]
Both print/desktop and annual web licenses start at:
* US$5 per style
* US$40 for a 14-style package of one width of Sans, Serif, or Mono
* US$80 for a 56-style package of all widths of Sans, Serif, or Mono
* US$200 for the entire 168-style series
Read the enclosed LICENSE.txt for more information, and learn more here: [http://input.fontbureau.com/download]
Questions? Comments? Thoughts about coding typography? Feel free to get in touch: [input@fontbureau.com]
If you’d like to support this project, please purchase a license.
## INSTALLATION
Follow the directions in INSTALL.txt.
## FAMILIES
Input Mono is a monospaced typeface, where all characters occupy a fixed width. Input Sans and Serif are proportional typefaces that are designed with all of the features of a good monospace — generous spacing, large punctuation, and easily distinguishable characters — but without the limitations of a fixed width.
## WIDTHS
Input comes in four widths: Normal, Narrow, Condensed, and Compressed.
I generally tend towards the wider widths, though the narrower widths can be handy if you use a smaller screen, diff multiple files side-by-side, or if your code usually has long lines. I use Input Mono Compressed in my terminal.
Input Mono Narrow approximates the copyfit of a 10-pitch font, and can be used as an alternative to Courier at the same size.
## WEIGHTS
Input comes in seven weights: Thin, Extra Light, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Black.
The Light and Medium weights were designed to be only slightly lighter than Regular and Bold, so that they can appear to be a similar weight when used with light text on a dark background. However, on some operating systems (like Mac OS), a dark background color can cause such significant haloing that the Extra Light or Thin weights may be a better approximation.
In Input’s proportional styles, the Thin, Extra Light, Light, and Regular weights all share the same setwidths, as do the Medium and Bold.
## ITALICS
Input’s Italics are always drawn on the same widths as the correspoding upright style. Input Serif’s Italics have an alternative serif arrangement, which makes them especially distinctive and useful when setting apart blocks of text.
## SIZE
These fonts are primarily intended for small sizes in subpixel-rendered environments. The design’s target size is 11px, but the core weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold) can go anywhere from 9px to 16px, and are manually hinted to improve performance at small sizes across operating systems. The extreme weights (Thin, Extra Light, and Black) styles are intended for 16px+. For use at display sizes, I recommend applying negative tracking and reducing the wordspace.
## COMBINING STYLES
I can’t predict which styles will work best for you in which combinations, which is why I offer them all. There are plenty of ways that you can mix and match these styles. I have been experimenting with setting my code as follows:
* Sans for keywords, variables, and text
* Serif for strings, tags, and values
* Mono for working in a Terminal, or while editing code that uses wordspaces/tabs for alignment
* Bold for class and function definitions
* Italic for comments, special words (like ‘this’ or ‘self’), and secondary languages (like CSS within an HTML document)
## ALTERNATES
Input allows you to use OpenType features or a command-line interface to select your preferred form of easily confusable characters:
* Stylistic Set 01: Schoolbook a
* Stylistic Set 02: Schoolbook g
* Stylistic Set 03: i with top serif (Sans and Mono only)
* Stylistic Set 04: l with top serif (Sans and Mono only)
* Stylistic Set 05: i with top and bottom serif (Sans and Mono only)
* Stylistic Set 06: l with top and bottom serif (Sans and Mono only)
* Stylistic Set 07: i with full serif (Sans only)
* Stylistic Set 08: l with full serif (Sans only)
* Stylistic Set 09: i with top serif and tail (Sans and Mono only)
* Stylistic Set 10: l with top serif and tail (Sans and Mono only)
* Stylistic Set 11: Mid-height asterisk
* Stylistic Set 12: Straight braces
* Stylistic Set 13: Undotted square zero
* Slashed Zero ('zero')
Here are some examples of how you can customize Input to mimic the arrangement of these characters in common fonts:
* Andale Mono
* OpenType features: ss03, ss06
* inputCustomize.py: --i=topserif --l=serifs
* Consolas
* OpenType features: ss07, ss08, zero
* inputCustomize.py: --i=serif --l=serif --zero=slash
* Menlo
* OpenType features: ss02, ss07, ss10, ss11, zero
* inputCustomize.py: --g=ss --i=serif --l=serifs_round --asterisk=height --zero=slash
* Monaco
* OpenType features: ss01, ss02, ss05, ss06, zero
* inputCustomize.py: --a=ss --g=ss --i=serifs --l=serifs --zero=slash
* Source Code Pro:
* OpenType features: ss03, ss10
* inputCustomize.py: --i=topserif --l=serifs_round --asterisk=height
See more examples at [http://input.fontbureau.com/preview].
## CUSTOMIZATION
inputCustomize.py is a command-line python script that allows you to easily make adjustments to your fonts. It requires TTX/FontTools <http://sourceforge.net/projects/fonttools/>.
My hope is that Input will encourage developers of source code editors to include better typographic support, so that these issues don’t need to be addressed in such a hacky way.
### Alternates
Since most coding applications don’t offer support of OpenType features, this tool will swap out default glyphs for their alternate forms. See description of the alternates above.
### Hack for line-spacing
Since many coding applications don’t include the option to adjust line-spacing, you can modify the built-in linespacing of the fonts.
### Hack for four-style families
Since most coding applications don’t allow you to use more than one four-style family, Input allows you to assemble arbitrary four-style families. I use this in order to combine Sans and Serif, by slotting InputSerif–Regular into the Bold Italic position.
Font family “Input”
* Regular: Input Sans Regular
* Italic: Input Sans Italic
* Bold: Input Sans Bold
* Bold Italic: Input Serif Regular
If you would like to use multiple families at the same time, you can use the --suffix parameter to add a short suffix to Input’s menu names, which can help you distinguish different versions.
### Examples
You can use inputCustomize.py like this to work on all fonts in the current working directory:
$ cd /path/to/the/fonts/you/want/to/edit
$ python /path/to/inputCustomize.py --dest=/path/to/output --lineHeight=1.5 --fourStyleFamily --a --g --i=topserif --l=serifs_round --zero --asterisk
Or like this, to create a family out of any four styles:
$ python /path/to/inputCustomize.py InputSans-Regular.ttf InputSans-Italic.ttf InputSans-Bold.ttf InputSerif-Regular.ttf --suffix=Hack --fourStyleFamily --a
For more details, see the script’s help:
$ python /path/to/inputCustomize.py -h
## SPECIAL THANKS
All typefaces I work on are collaborations, but this typeface especially benefitted from the feedback and advice of a large number of people. I’d like to thank all of Input’s beta testers who tried it on for size; Maria Doreuli, who consulted with me on the Cyrillic; Matthew Butterick, who gave helpful advice as a coder and as typeface designer; the folks at Paratype, who made the hinting of this massive family possible; Frank Grießhammer, who wrote the excellent box drawing character generator and suggested the Thin weights; and finally my coworkers who all played a role in making this typeface happen: David Berlow, Sam Berlow, Petr van Blokland, Paley Dreier, CJ Dunn, Cyrus Highsmith, Indra Kupferschmid, Chris Lewis, André Mora, Jill Pichotta, and Nick Sherman. Thank you so much. – David Jonathan Ross
