News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by cameronbrown on Friday July 26, 2019 @10:13AM (#20534950)
People often forget one of the reasons Comic Sans is so popular is because of these properties, and cyclically the reason it's so hated is because people can't help but see it everywhere.
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by atoav on Friday July 26, 2019 @11:07AM (#20535338)
I think the Problem isn’t that it is everywhere, but it is a Font with a lot of character and people use it in all the inapropriate cases.

If you print a warning sign, the choice of Comic Sans (or Papyrus etc.) is incompatible with the message you wanna express. If you use Comic Sans for a childrens birthday invitation or well – a Comic – then your choice of font fits the message you are communicating.

Most Fonts that aren’t simple serif or sans-serif fonts add an additional message to the message you are conveying. Something neutral like an Helvetica/Arial/Calibri will not be perceived as conveying any additional context.

So fancy fonts essentially get into the way of your message if you don’t know what you are doing and this is the way Comic Sans got it’s reputation.

Additionally Comic Sans isn’t even that good of a Comic font to be honest..

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by jonshariat on Friday July 26, 2019 @12:29PM (#20535996)
This is the main reason people dislike the typeface. Its in the misuse not the design.
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by xvector on Friday July 26, 2019 @01:07PM (#20536322)
I can't be the only one who use Comic Sans ironically, in situations where it's as far from appropriate as could be...
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by floatboth on Friday July 26, 2019 @01:38PM (#20536575)
OpenBSD presentation slides are done in Comic Sans… but it's hard to say if it's far from appropriate there, or actually 100% appropriate.
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by somacert on Friday July 26, 2019 @01:59PM (#20536824)
My interpretation of the openbsd slides are that it acts as a sort of turing test.

If you are the sort that is excessively bothered by our use of the comic-sans typeface. Then perhaps you are not a good fit for our project.

More and more, I see the the continued use of cvs as sort of the same thing. It works and it weeds out people who care more about how something is done then what is done.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by kazinator on Friday July 26, 2019 @03:18PM (#20537572)
I developed a layer for CVS that provides directory structure versioning, symbolic links and execute permissions. Plus more: branches with merge tracking workflow for repeated merges, and a grab command that imports snapshots, identifying renamed/moved files, with symlink tracking.

That was 17 years ago.

People still using CVS in 2019 and not taking advantage of Meta-CVS are in a pretty special category.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by sitkack on Friday July 26, 2019 @08:36PM (#20539584)
https://web.archive.org/web/20061230063314/http://users.foot...

This is sounds awesome. Would you suggest CVS or SVN for new deployments?

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by kazinator on Saturday July 27, 2019 @12:42PM (#20542789)
The web page for this is alive, actually:

http://www.kylheku.com/~kaz/mcvs.html

I added the missing 1.1.98 tarball. Also, just tagged 1.2 which picks up some subsequent changes. (Last time anything was touched was 2014).

I wouldn't recommend CVS or SVN for any new deployments.

Even with Meta-CVS, CVS still sucks at the infrastructural level: the branching model and so on.

Meta-CVS has better support than Git for tracking changes in the directory structure, but that's not enough to offset the downside of being based on CVS.

Someone should port Meta-CVS to Git.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by lone_haxx0r on Friday July 26, 2019 @07:13PM (#20539147)
> If you are the sort that is excessively bothered by our use of the comic-sans typeface. Then perhaps you are not a good fit for our project.

This is exactly what happened to me. I was thinking about installing OpenBSD, but then watched a presentation were Theo used Comic Sans and it put me off the whole project. The thing is: every OS has specific details turning me away from them: Linux, the BSDs, Windows, Android, MacOS.

Maybe I should stop using computers altogether, or maybe I should go with the flow and accept that everything and everyone in this world is mediocre and being a perfectionist is a fatal weakness.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by copperx on Friday July 26, 2019 @10:51PM (#20540111)
The brightest and most productive people I've known can turn off perfectionism at will. Or more accurately, they accept mediocre input from others to find the diamond in the rough. They also accept mediocrity in the process; they don't care if they're brute forcing a part of the solution as long as they know that all of the pieces of the big picture are in place. In other words, they focus on the right thing.

Then, they turn perfectionism on when it comes to their output. They make sure their writing is impeccable and that communication is clear, precise, and efficient.

Unfocused perfectionism is a curse. It's a cause or a symptom of self-sabotage. Probably both.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by inflatableDodo on Friday July 26, 2019 @02:01PM (#20536843)
I love OpenBSD's utterly passive aggressive use of comic sans. To adapt a popular metaphor, it is going out and painting the bikeshed flourescent pink and green tartan, whilst everyone else is still trapped in the meeting.
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by bradknowles on Friday July 26, 2019 @05:56PM (#20538700)
More like pooping on the bikeshed, and then spreading that around and calling it "paint".
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by steveklabnik on Friday July 26, 2019 @06:42PM (#20538992)
Simon Peyton Jones is also (in)famous for doing this.
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by bogwog on Friday July 26, 2019 @12:04PM (#20535799)
> one of the reasons Comic Sans is so popular is because of these properties

I doubt most people who use it do so because they know it will make it easier for people with dyslexia to read. My mother uses it all the time because she thinks its cute.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by stcredzero on Friday July 26, 2019 @11:02AM (#20535298)
An Irish fiddler of some note once quipped, "What's the difference between a great tune and a hackneyed tune? About 20 years."

(Tunes come back around. They get so worn out, and "institutionalized" people stop actually playing them for fun. Then, if they fade back into obscurity, another generation can "discover" them again.)

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by DonHopkins on Friday July 26, 2019 @01:03PM (#20536294)
Almost 20 years ago, we shipped a game called The Sims that used Comic Sans all throughout, that sold pretty well in spite of the font. Although maybe it's one reason some people are sick and tired of Comic Sans.

https://www.caseyconnect.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media...

When to use Comic Sans:

https://www.caseyconnect.com/blog/2013/typography/comic-sans...

>The Sims Comic Sans in-game text

>Because of it's lighthearted nature, Comic Sans might be appropriate for design situations where humor or lack of seriousness is appropriate. One example of this is the simulation game The Sims, where Comic Sans was used for all in-game text. Materials appropriate for children might also benefit from the use of Comic Sans.

In case you can't stand to read Comic Sans with your own eyes, I also made an external screen scraping utility called Simplifier that reads Comic Sans text off the screen, and catalogs and recites the product descriptions with a speech synthesizer.

Demo of The Sims Transmogrifier, RugOMatic, ShowNTell, Simplifier and Slice City:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imu1v3GecB8

I recently dug up an early internal pre-release demo of it for "The Sims Steering Committee" from June 4 1998, that convinced EA not to cancel our project. It shows a very early version of the user interface, that was already using Comic Sans. (So did the Quick Start Guide.)

The Sims Steering Committee - June 4 1998:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY

(Notice last word of the second paragraph of the Level 4 scenario description at 1:00! ;) Maybe the fact that it was written in Comic Sans enabled that little boo-boo to fly under the radar.)

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by rafaelvasco on Friday July 26, 2019 @01:33PM (#20536534)
Absolutely. And it was the perfect font choice for The Sims. I really like Comic Sans when it's used in the right context.
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by DonHopkins on Friday July 26, 2019 @11:46PM (#20540265)
The other perfect application of Comic Sans was (wait for it....) Microsoft Comic Chat!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat

>Microsoft Comic Chat installed a custom font, Comic Sans MS, that users could use in other applications and documents. In 1996 it was bundled with several other fonts in Microsoft's Core Fonts for the Web project and subsequent versions of Microsoft Windows, leading to its notoriety among the internet.

https://chrisgliddon.com/a-trip-down-memory-lane-microsoft-c...

>While Microsoft’s Comic Sans was first introduced in 1995 as part of a Windows 95 Plus Pack, the font was more likely cemented into many people’s minds for one or two reasons: 1) well-meaning, yet not-necessarily-design-savvy educators, and 2) being selected as the default font in a new internet chat application called Microsoft Comic Chat.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by hedora on Monday July 29, 2019 @12:35AM (#20551532)
MS Comic Chat is still my favorite IRC client, even if it is completely useless for communication these days.
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by atoav on Friday July 26, 2019 @11:20AM (#20535439)
The problem is that fonts (like tunes) can carry their own context with them. But people are very sensitive to music and very insensitive to fonts.

E.g. it is more likely to get an funeral invitation in Comic Sans than to hear the musical equivalent of Comic Sans on a funeral (assuming both was selected by a relative).

People are extremely careless in their use of fonts and don’t think about the additional context their font choice carries to anybody reading. A bit like people who write with capslock on and don’t even think about how this changes how their message is perceived on the other end.

And Comic Sans is the cristalization of that phenomena, precisely because it is so recognizeable: nobody cares if you write all lowercase after all.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by lloeki on Friday July 26, 2019 @12:18PM (#20535919)
A good example of that is resumes. A friend thought his resume was good but could not understand why he got turned down every time he applied for a job.

I picked an appropriate font, aligned things a bit in the layout and made good use of a couple of white space. 5min job, minor tweaks, zero copy changes.

Suddenly he got loads of positive replies to his applications.

The target crowd was not one aware of typography nor design knowledge. The volume of applications was also entering the realm of statistically significant.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by bitwize on Friday July 26, 2019 @01:09PM (#20536332)
> An Irish fiddler of some note once quipped, "What's the difference between a great tune and a hackneyed tune? About 20 years."

TVTropes calls this phenomenon "Seinfeld Isn't Funny".

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by kazinator on Friday July 26, 2019 @03:12PM (#20537523)
Almost every use of the font is misuse. In all the supposedly correct uses for Comic Sans, the correct thing is to actually write by hand to create the true personal touch.

People hate the faked personal touch of a canned font that imitates writing which looks the same everywhere, letter for letter, no matter who produces the writing.

There is a middle ground: you can turn your own handwriting into a font.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by mjcohen on Friday July 26, 2019 @04:17PM (#20538015)
Yeah. Write by hand, send by snail mail, takes a week for a reply.

No thanks. If my writing were turned into a font, it would be called Illegibilissimus. Keyboard for me whenever possible.

I even do my math with a keyboard using Macdown and Moeditor in real time. Don't even write by hand then.

Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by krilly on Sunday July 28, 2019 @10:12AM (#20547625)
I agree with your point about the fake personal touch, but I think this effect is because comic sans is so ubiquitous. A great alternative handwritten font is Architect's Daughter, which is free for personal use
Re:Comic Code – Monospaced interpretation of the most over-h... by karmakaze on Friday July 26, 2019 @04:22PM (#20538049)
I can't wait to try them it out on a tech talk later this month.