The most expensive coding font for free?

There are just so many wonderful monospace fonts already out there that either come with your OS (Monaco, Consolas, Ubuntu Mono) or are free that I don't know why I should bother.<p>People still pay for fonts instead of downloading cheap knockoffs because of ligatures, a wide amount of characters and meticulous kerning. All things that a monospaced font doesn't need.<p>The one thing this font seems to add is that it is supposed to look good without font smoothing. But then, why would anyone care about that in a world where we always render fonts with anti-aliasing anyway?

The font looks good. But does it really solve a problem most people need solved? I don't remember last time I though "Hmm, if only I had a better font, I would work so much faster/better...". I did think that when using Linux 10 years ago when my fonts were blurry and fuzzy but not now.<p>Another way to put it, even if that font was available for free now I don't know I'd bother installing it just because ... there is the step of installing it. I would just rather pick a font from my default OS font choices.

Let's delay arguments about whether one should change fonts or not [0] and think about crowdfunding applied to design work. We should be more interested in whether this will work, and why or why not.<p>Last summer, Hyperakt [1] crowd-funded a beautiful radial depiction of the 2010 World Cup brackets [2]. I paid $25 for a great poster [3], and now Deroy has a new fan.<p>That project worked for the same reason all Kickstarter projects work: if the project succeeds, users and producers exchange money for goods. If the market doesn't validate your project, consumers aren't committed to pay and producers don't reap any benefits. This is a great model for project planning and idea validation.<p>On the other hand, this project extracts consumer rents <i>immediately.</i> If Fabrizio doesn't hit the $220k goal [4], users only get an <i>option</i> to purchase a license for $100 minus their contribution. No repercussions for the producer--he gets paid regardless. This is fine for licensing an existing font, but it sucks for spec work or otherwise non-existent work.<p>I'm sure everyone has a few questions about the amount he's charging. [5] However, we should focus on how Kickstarter provides a consumer-friendly market while this project exists on a producer-friendly market. These are some great introductory economic concepts.<p>EDIT: actually, each market has its own benefits. With Kickstarter, you can obtain market validation for free (or cheap). With IndieGogo, you can guarantee payment on existing products.<p>-------<p>[0] I took an hour to switch from Monaco to Anonymous Pro; now I wish I hadn't wasted that hour but at least I'm set for life.<p>[1] <a href="http://hyperakt.com/" rel="nofollow">http://hyperakt.com/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-cup-radial-bracket-poster" rel="nofollow">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyperakt/2010-world-cup-...</a><p>[3] Even more beautiful after La Furia Roja took the Cup!<p>[4] Btw: ouch.<p>[5] Are we paying for the 4 years of work he's put in? Hasn't he made money from other licenses already? There are probably some obvious answers I'm missing out on.

Just wanted to chime in: I paid Fabrizio for PragmataPro last year and haven't regretted it a bit. Maybe paying $100+ for a font isn't for everyone, but my entire life revolves around looking at fixed-width fonts and it's important to me. After trying almost everything else out there, Pragmata/PragmataPro feel much better and make me happier looking at lots of text.

Having both Latin and Cyrillic scripts done well in a single monospace font is extremely rare. Even Ubunto Mono (which is brand-new and still in active development) is having trouble, and they're professionals who take suggestions from users very seriously. e.g. <a href="http://blog.cosmix.org/2011/10/04/ubuntu-mono-the-gamma-travesty/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.cosmix.org/2011/10/04/ubuntu-mono-the-gamma-trav...</a> . No one has said publicly how much Canonical is paying Dalton Maag to make the Ubuntu font family, but I'm sure it's a lot more than $220,000.

4 years and over 200k dollars seems like quite a bit. I understand being meticulous, but this is a bit absurd.

I prefer the coding font Anonymous Pro (has nothing to do with the hacktivist group) - it's located here and it's for free.<p><a href="http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ms-studio.com/FontSales/anonymouspro.html</a><p>Personally, PragmataPro looks too condensed for me. It is probably more "economical" to use condensed fonts, but to me, it is really not very readable.

43% in Italian taxes? That kind of sucks. He needs an accountant to give advice about (legally) reducing the tax burden to something more reasonable.

If the 800 days are work days this means 4 years of work. ~200000 dollars really is not much for this time frame - you could even call it a bargain :) Anyway, I think I won't donate since I feel like I might lose the money when the goal is not reached (I don't really want a discount on the license fee).

I downloaded the screenshots of this font and have to admit I wish I could use it right now. Looks pretty good to me. That said, the monetary goal seems a bit lofty considering how many people this would really solve a need for.<p>Still, if the fundraising were arranged on something like kickstarter where I'd get my donation back if it fails to reach the goal I'd kick in a bit. Not terribly interested in a discount on the other license.

I don't think this font is ideal for widescreen monitors. Vertical space is more scarce than horizontal space, so a font that increases the former at the expense of the latter doesn't use space efficiently. Leaving space usage aside, is there evidence that a narrow font is more readable?

Fabrizio, have you thought about pitching this to Apple? Seriously. I personally don't get it, but it seems like the type of thing that Jobs would appreciate (if he liked it) and say it was worth the money. Ask Apple if they'd buy it for XCode, so all Apple devs could have it.

If anyone's wondering what the color scheme is, I believe it's Solarized <a href="http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized" rel="nofollow">http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized</a> (on HN previously <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393976" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2393976</a> )

Why is it so narrow? It reminds me of doing things like "} else {" in code, packing lots of content onto the screen and removing all readability.

Folks have launched impressive projects with 10K there. I understand he wants to pay a salary retroactively, but there is no way this is going to make 3.5K per day.

This method of project funding suffers from an unfortunate separation of "pain" and reward. I have to hand over my money now, knowing that it <i>might</i> lead to the font being available in 800 days. That is a long time.<p>Compare this with two major alternatives to this model: Kickstarter and things like the Humble Indie Bundle.<p>In one, I pledge money now for some future benefit, but I do so knowing that I only end up paying if the project reaches enough support and funding. This feels safe: I can pledge however I think the result is worth, because I only pay if it succeeds.<p>In the other, I can get my reward immediately (instant gratification!), but I can choose how much to pay for it.<p>The problem of Indiegogo, is that I have to pay now, but I cannot be sure that I actually get anything in return (a discount on a license is not enough). This means the risk of investment is much higher. I did pledge some money, but not what I would pay for the font were it either in Kickstarter form or through a "Humble Bundle" kind of model. I am sure I am not the only one.<p>To turn this into some useful advice for Fabrizio: How about giving donators preview access to the unfinished font? This brings the reward closer to the donation :)

I've been using one of the "Proggy" fonts from <a href="http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download" rel="nofollow">http://www.proggyfonts.com/index.php?menu=download</a> for awhile now... I don't remember which one specifically, I think "Proggy Clean".<p>This one looks good too, and maybe it'd be better than Proggy or one of the others around, but I don't think it's $220,000 better.

This is actually very expensive...<p>If I made a font like this, I would rather keep it as a donation, as the font was developed out of free will.<p>BTW I use Menlo...

800 days working without knowing whether or not there was actually a way to make any money?<p>Lets _not_ talk about whether or not this will work. Lets talk about how this is absolutely not, under any circumstances, a productive way to spend one's time.<p>187 people bought the previous version of this font. Do some sales projections, estimate market size, review the competition (such as the Ubuntu monospace fonts), talk to the existing customers about the features they actually _use_ everyday (hebrew characters? really?), and even I can conclude that the market isn't going to be viable for the given business plan.<p>I'm going to call Eric Ries, and ask him nicely if he can send you a copy of his book. Cause' you my friend, are doing it _wrong_ .

While depth and ambition of this project is impressive (take a look at the screenshots in the .zip), I think the goal seems a bit lofty, particularly when there are many more-than-adequate free/open-source monospace fonts available.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: In case the campaign does not reach the objective, I will offer to every contributors the regular license of PragmataPro™ at €20 (instead of €170) also if the contributor donate also just $1 only. At the end of this campaign every contributors can claims this offer. But please don’t offer anonymously if you want this discount.

Does anybody have any data on how many people program in greek, cyrillic, or hebrew characters? I suspect that 90% of programs that are out there could be written with 10% of the glyphs that he is proposing to hand hint. Why not focus on those and reduce the price accordingly?

PragmataPro looks good, but when ever this topic comes up I always end up going back to Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.<p><a href="http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/ttf-bitstream-vera/1.10/" rel="nofollow">http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/ttf-bitstream-vera/1....</a>

13% fees, 43% taxes: Shouldn't the 13% fees be tax deductible, because they were incurred as a result of earning the revenue?

What was the program being used for designing the font?

$20 RAISED OF $220,000 GOAL<p>Yeah, I think I'm going to pass on this one.

Always wonder how a new user of hacker news get front page to h'm so easily. Seems to easy to game.

Off topic: is it just me or why does indiegogo.com resembles so much like userscripts.org