Nerd Font and big symbols

[Finii]

These are additional and updated toughts (and hopefully discussion) on #764

• font-patcher: Make Nerd Fonts Monospaced Again #764
• Konsole rendering messed up for non-mono version on master branch #746

Now and then we have problems with the non-Mono patched fonts.

With the Nerd Font Mono variant all glyphs have the same cell-width and advance-width. It icons are reduced in size until they are small enough to fit into the same space as a W. These are truly monospaced and we set the monospaced Panose property.

But a lot people feel the icons are too small. They would like to have them bigger (then one slot). Typically they are around 1.5 slots wide. A lot of applications and terminals know this and put a blank after a symbol (in case of applications), so that the symbol can protrude out on the right into the next cell without obliterating anything.
This is the non-Mono variant.

To achieve this there are two different ways:

• A Just inset the symbols as 'bigger' glyphs, i.e. the cell and the advance width are bigger then normal.
• B Insert the symbols in a monoscaped cell and advance width but let it protude into the next character.

Some facts:

• A: Because the advance width is correct these are nice to use in proportional environments, no need for an additional blank
• A: Some terminals do not take these, as they have a varying cell width i.e. are not monospaced
• A: Windows Terminal rescales them to fit the cell size
• B: These look bad if you do not expect symbols to be 'wide' and omit the additional blank after the symbol
• B: Windows Terminal shows them correctly if blank is present, cut off if next character is not a blank

History:

• v1.0.0 uses A
• v2.0.0 uses A
• fix monospace/overlap problem #283
  • cf625d4 switch to B
• v2.1.0 uses B
• no PR
  • 59c45ba Remove negative bearings on 2048-em glyphs switch to A
• v2.2.1 uses A
• v2.2.2 uses B

Lets examine where 59c45ba Remove negative bearings on 2048-em glyphs comes from:

2020-09-06 04:34 -0700 Ryan L McIntyre               │ │ │ │ │ │ M─│─│─│─│─┐ Merge branch 'update-symbols-only-249-429' of https://github.com/polyzen/nerd-fonts into polyzen-update-symbols-on
2020-04-12 01:59 -0400 Daniel M. Capella             │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ o Remove negative bearings on 2048-em glyphs
2020-04-08 16:48 -0400 Daniel M. Capella             │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ o Update Symbols-only fonts for #249 and #429

• Remake the original-source font file #249
• add Crystal icon #429

That looks like the switch back to A with 59c45ba should have not affected all fonts but just the Symbols-only font?

Edit: Add v2.2.2 status, see #881

[Finii]

Lets see how typical terminals handle fonts of type A compared to B:

Tilix

1.9.4
shows A and B identical (if width of glyph <= 2 cells)
clips wide glyphs to 2 cells with B (if no glyph follows)

uE25E ' ' ' ' uE25E X X X ' ' ' ' uE300 ' ' ' ' ' ' uE300 X X X

Font A

Font B

Kitty

0.21.2
Handles A and B the same. Glyph scaled down to 1 cell initially. If next glyph is a blank (not another whitespace) the 'cell' grows to width 2 and it is probably scaled down to 2 cells or if it fits its displayed ok. Another blank grows the cell to 3 width.

Font A

Font B

Gnome Terminal

3.44.0
clips wide glyphs to 2 cells with B (if no glyph follows)

Font A
Can not be selected

Font B

Alacritty

0.11.0-dev
Shows A and B identical

Font A

Font B