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@@ -1,28 +1,24 @@
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-## Hack Typeface Design
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+# Hack Typeface Design
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Hack is a monospaced typeface that is designed to optimize the display of source code text.
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+This document outlines the core ideas on which we build to continually improve Hack. Ideally, they serve as a final rationale to decide disputes of whatever nature.
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-### Primary Design Targets
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+## Design Targets
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-- ASCII glyph set (used to display the body of all source code text)
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-- font sizes between 8 - 14 px
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-- cross-platform, cross font renderer support on Linux, OS X, and Windows operating systems
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-- desktop text editor text displays
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-- terminal emulator text displays
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-- website text displays
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-- print text displays
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+Hack is a general purpose typeface for source code. The _needs of the many_ describe our core design targets. Generally, an issue that affects 90% of users, gets a higher priority than one that 'only' affects 10%.
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+### Core
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-### Primary Design Optimizations
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+- **ASCII glyph set**; generally speaking, all source code is limited to ASCII. Content/comments/documentation, on the other hand, often includes non-ASCII characters. The former gets precendence over the latter.
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+- Font-sizes between **8-14 px**, line-height >= 1
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+- **Cross-platform**, cross font renderer support on Linux, OS X, and Windows operating systems
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+- Usage in **common developer scenarios** (on digital displays): text editors, terminals, embedded as webfont, etc.
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-- legibility - establish differences in the appearance of similar glyph shapes so as to properly identify different Unicode code points
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-- readability - glyph shape and spacing optimizations to improve the capacity to read character-character, word-word, and code block-code block combinations in source code
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-- visual semantics - establish semantic commonalities for glyphs used in source code text and create common visual designs within these semantic groups
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+## Goals, areas of improvement
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+- **Legibility** - establish differences in the appearance of similar glyph shapes so as to properly identify different Unicode code points
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+- **Readability** - glyph shape and spacing optimizations to improve the capacity to read character-character, word-word, and code block-code block combinations in source code
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+- **Visual semantics** - establish semantic commonalities for glyphs used in source code text and create common visual designs within these semantic groups
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-### Secondary Design Targets
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-- All glyphs outside of the ASCII set (including extended character sets used for the display of comments in source code)
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-- All font sizes outside of the primary design targets
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-- All forms of text display outside of the primary design targets
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David van Gemeren