#10

The most important question: Does the font you want to use contain all characters you use in your field of research?

  • Does the font include other writing systems, e.g.:
    • Greek ελληνική γλώσσα
    • Hebrew עברית
    • Arabic اَللُّغَةُ اَلْعَرَبِيَّة
    • Sanskrit संस्कृत
    • Japanese/Chinese 日本語/漢語
  • Do you need diacritical marks, e.g. when working with transliterations, e.g.:
    • Prajñāpāramitā
    • Ḫirbet ez-Zerāqōn
    • Kuntillet ʿAǧrūd
    • zhǐguǎn dǎzuò
  • Do you need mathematical or philosophical-logical characters?
    • (A ∧ B) ∨ ¬(A ∨ B) ↔ ¬(A ∧ B)
    • ∌≌≡⊆

By the way: Does anyone know how Obsidian handles fallback fonts?

3 Likes
#11

Oh, Lora is SUCH a gorgeous font. Do you use it throughout the entire app, or just for the body?

#12

For editing I use iA Writer Quattro GitHub - iaolo/iA-Fonts: Free variable writing fonts from iA it’s one of the reasons iA Writer is one of my favorite writing apps.

For preview, I have Fira Code for code blocks, San Francisco (apple system) for body text and Publico Headline for headings.

3 Likes
#13

Just for the body. I use -apple-system for everything else so obsidian blends in more with the os!

3 Likes
#14

From the discussion on Cascadia’s github, it leads me to Recursive font, absolutely gorgeous.

#15

@PhucLe Thanks for the tip! Great font. Do you know how I can change text and headings in Obsidian to this font? I installed @mgmeyers Style Settings-plugin, entered as Base Font Recursive, sans-serif, but nothing changes. Any idea?

#16

So Style Settings is a plugin for theme creators, plugin developers and css snippet makers to use to make their creations easily customizable. Are you using a particular theme that has support for Style Settings? It may be that their commenting wasn’t properly formatted or that something is overriding it.

1 Like
#17

Hmm, strange. I downloaded and installed Recursive and it seems to work just fine using the default theme Style Settings config:

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Do other fonts work for you?

#18

I use the ‘Red Graphite’ theme. Now I tried it with the standard theme (in the Help vault), but that also doesn’t work.

#19

I see in your picture that you simply have ‘Recursive’ in the textbox, and the font has changed. That doesn’t work for me. But when I look at the fonts list e.g. in Word (on Windows), there are many ‘Recursive’ fonts, like ‘Recursive Mn Csl St’, ‘Recursive Mn Lnr St’ etc. I don’t have a font with the name ‘Recursive’ alone. Could that be the problem? (Sorry for the maybe simple questions, but I don’t have experiences with font handling.) Thanks!

#20

Yeah, that could be it. I just installed this single variable font. But it may work differently on windows. Like you said, you may have to use one of those other font names

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1 Like
#21

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I just love it. I spend a lot of time in terminals and I just prefer monospace type in general. I like Karla as well, someone mentioned that already.

I like Operator Mono as well. Especially Italic.

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1 Like
#22

Obsidian is good I’m also using it. My most favourite one is Open Sans because I offer typography services and most of my clients like it. I also like to explore other fonts. Sometimes I also use Soin Sans Pro for headings and Georgia for body text.

#23

I use “Ivy Mode” for Heading and Vault fonts, “Recursive Sans Casual” for normal text, and “Recursive Mono Casual” for code. The reason for these selections is because they appear easily readable to me.

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2 Likes
#24

I really like the Cascadia Mono Font:

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1 Like
#26

I was about to start a typography topic, but I’m glad to find there’s already one open. I was unaware there had been such development in the market of monospace fonts, and I really want to try some of the ones you guys suggested.

I’m somewhat of a typography nerd and I have two rather opinionated looks which I’ve been really enjoying lately: the first is Times New Roman, with an all white theme and those 1991 HTML vibes. This is basically my palate cleanser, because I tend to spend lots of time customizing Obsidian just because I can, which can be rather distracting and time consuming. I tend to revert to this when I have a font-related itch and I just don’t have time to fix the CSS or try a newer and fresher typeface.

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And my actual favorite vault font as of now is Archivo, an amazing grotesque sans-serif by an Argentinian type-foundry. I love it because it has a lot of weight and width variants, so I set it up to:

  • Extra Condensed for my h1, because I tend to use phrases (like Nick suggests) and this allows me to fit them in less lines.
    • I also use Extra Condensed for the UI, which is the real game changer, because I work on a small 17" monitor and this allows me to keep my sidebars really narrow. When I’m working fullscreen, I get to have them both open at the same time without affecting the line width of my main note.
  • Expanded for the h2 and Extra Condensed uppercase for h3, so I can easily differentiate them without huge point size differences.
  • Regular for my text, because I don’t like getting fancy with my body text, and Archivo has a good x-height which makes for great readability.

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#27

@AtrusRiven : I have read that elsewhere a number of times, but I do not agree with it. I recently discovered Monaco and really like it in Edt and in Preview mode. In fact, I find a lot easier to read than any variable width font.

In my browser I use the Dark Reader extension, in which you can choose the font that web pages are rendered in. Guess what …… I chose Monaco.

Sorry, for the rant, but I think monospaced fonts are dismissed too easily as not being suitable for Preview.

#28

I use Minimal Theme and iA Mono for the font.

Reason? I love iA Writer and now I can use Obsidian with the same feeling as I am using iA Writer!

#29

Thanks for you opinion. Of course you can have a distinct preference. I just referred to

  1. the design intention of monospaced fonts
  2. which is based on the assumption that fonts with equal character spacing are much more difficult to read for the ordinary user. Different spacings are a problem for the orientation of the eyes along the line (keywords: spacing and kerning). The more text you use the more difficult it get. Basically it’s the same for you but evntually you have another preference based on another use case.

I don’t know Monaco but eventually it’s a middle way and not a “pure” monospaced font?

#30

@AtrusRiven I experimented with 2 more monospaced fonts, Space Mono and MonoLisa, which are both also very pleasant fonts to use. I have a slight preference now for the latter because of how it renders certain symbols.

Whether Monaco is not a pure monospaced font might be true because, although better than variable width fonts, I found it not quite a pleasant as Space Mono and MonolLisa.

I find that when I use one of the monospaced fonts my eyes do not hurt anymore at the end of a day. I find them a lot more calming because the letters are wider spaced from one another, and consistent.

With a variable width fonts I find I have to make more of an effort to read, even having to squint a bit at times.

I used to hate monospaced, and whenever an Obsidian theme I tried out had a monospaced font for Edit mode, I used to change it immediately to the variable width font of Preview - also for the WYSIWYG experience. I now do the inverse: MonoLisa for both Edit and Preview.

Be that as it may, most people will disagree with me, much preferring a variable width font any time.

1 Like