:hide-toc:

###########
Xicago Mono
###########


About
=====

A mono-spaced interpretation of the venerable "Chicago" font, the system font of the classic Mac OS.

- `Project Page <https://codeberg.org/ideasman42/font-xicago-mono>`__.
- `Download <https://codeberg.org/ideasman42/font-xicago-mono/releases>`__.


Why?
----

These days I find many of the modern mono-spaced fonts, while functional,
tend towards looking generic and similar to each other - lacking character.
On the other hand, many font's *with* character tend to fall into the novelty category,
styled to look artistic but are impractical as a general purpose system-font.

Chicago has a distinctive look, with the heavy stems, light bars and unique
design for glyphs giving it a lot of character.

This font aims to balance the classic aesthetic with the requirements of mono-spaced fonts on modern systems.
Changes have been kept to those needed for the font to be used as a terminal font and for software development.


Approach
--------

The original is proportional, so the glyphs have been redrawn to fit a single cell,
close to the original's medium width, with the wide characters (such as ``M`` & ``W``) narrowed to fit.

Each glyph is drawn as strokes under an oval pen, twice as wide as it is tall,
as the original's stems are two pixels to its bars' one.
The "Bold" weight thickens the strokes, the "Italic" styles slant the glyphs and use cursive forms
of some lower-case letters.

Glyphs for characters not found in the original (Greek & Cyrillic) have been created,
following the Latin style.

Divergences
^^^^^^^^^^^

Noting some changes from the Chicago, mainly for readability.

- Dotted zero to differentiate it from ``O``.
- Increase differentiation between ``O`` & ``D``, using more rounded curves.
- Increase differentiation between ``u`` & ``v``, raising the lower curve to on the ``v`` to avoid confusion.
- Serifs on the ``i`` & ``j``, to increase their width, which better fits a mono-spaced font
  further differentiate them from ``l`` & ``1``.
- Lower ``~`` & ``*`` to align vertically with ``-`` & ``+`` (better code readability).

Examples
========

.. Rendered by ``i42_font_tool font_render`` from the files in ``examples/``
   (see ``make doc_samples``), at twice the display size for high-DPI displays, which the scale compensates for.
   The alignment test is too wide for the page at that size, so it's scaled to the page width instead.

Styles
   .. image:: ../build/samples/code.png
      :scale: 50
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: Xicago Mono in the regular, bold, italic & bold italic styles, each with a pangram.

Alphabet
   .. image:: ../build/samples/alphabet.png
      :scale: 50
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: Glyphs which are easily confused, regular beside bold, then the ASCII letters & symbols.

Code (Python)
   .. image:: ../build/samples/code_python.png
      :scale: 50
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: Python source, syntax highlighted.

Code (Rust)
   .. image:: ../build/samples/code_rust.png
      :scale: 50
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: Rust source, syntax highlighted.

Box Drawing
   .. image:: ../build/samples/box.png
      :scale: 50
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: Tables in each line style, and a box within a box with a shadow.

Box Drawing Alignment Test
   .. image:: ../build/samples/box_alignment.png
      :width: 100%
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: The box drawing alignment test, junctions, dashes, diagonals & block ramps.

Greek Alphabet
   .. image:: ../build/samples/greek_alphabet.png
      :scale: 50
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: The Greek alphabet.

Greek Prose
   .. image:: ../build/samples/greek_prose.png
      :scale: 50
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: The opening of Ithaca by C. P. Cavafy.

Cyrillic Alphabet
   .. image:: ../build/samples/cyrillic_alphabet.png
      :scale: 50
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: The Cyrillic alphabet.

Cyrillic Prose
   .. image:: ../build/samples/cyrillic_prose.png
      :scale: 50
      :class: xicago-sample
      :alt: The opening of I Remember a Wondrous Moment by A. S. Pushkin.


Character Coverage
==================

In addition to ASCII, the font covers the following blocks & character sets.

.. Generated by ``i42_font_tool toml_report_unicode_coverage`` from the TOML (see ``make doc``).

.. include:: ../build/doc/character_coverage.rst


License
=======

Released under the `SIL Open Font License 1.1 <https://openfontlicense.org>`__,
see `LICENSE <https://codeberg.org/ideasman42/font-xicago-mono/src/branch/main/LICENSE>`__.