monospaced fonts

[Alexander Williams]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 6:47 AM, <Bowerbird at aol.com> wrote:


> no.  if you have a mac, and you're using a

> monospace font, you _missed_ the point.

>


If you're using a Mac and you're *noy* using a monospaced font for
presenting information in which it is important if things line up neatly
with other things, you're violating a vital and central tenet of Apple
design philosophy. And, no, that is not, "Whatever I want to do is what the
right way is." Because that's just dumb. It's "Use the right tool for the
job, generally the one that conveys the most embedded information without
undue differentiation; elegance, simplicity, efficiency." If you're using a
Mac and you're using a monospaced font, you're using a very pretty one that
has aesthetic chops, it's insanely regular, and it looks the same as far as
arrangement no matter who wrote it and what platform it was generated on.
And so, it works with rare fluidity in these days of crying, stomping your
feet, and pouting like an immature baboon.
If you're going to be trying to communicate structure that requires
intuitive, simple understanding of formatted output, you'll be using a
monospace font, so that my table and your table while being
visually indistinguishable don't turn out different output. "Principle of
Least Surprise." You should look it up, sometime. Do you a lot of good, I
think.

Seems rather obvious, really, dunnit?

-- 
Alexander Williams (thantos at gmail.com)
Operation BSU (http://operationbsu.livejournal.com)
"Like a morning show. Only interesting. And at night."
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