d305a0c8ea
This ends a month-long experiment with the much-lauded bitmap font
"Terminus". Overall, I like this typeface but stumbled upon several
subtle and not-so-subtle problems:
1. Terminus (and all other bitmap fonts I ever tried) is a poor fit for
light themes.
* At small point sizes, it is harder to read than when using a dark
theme. A "halo effect" is created around letter fonts.
* Similarly, colours are less distinct from each other due to the
way the letter forms are drawn. This is not about the choice of
colours: switching to an outline font while using the same light
theme, say Tempus Totus, is like switching to a new colour scheme
altogether.
2. Terminus does not cope well with bold fonts at certain point sizes.
Letter forms can become distorted, or are just well below the
standard set by the regular variant.
3. Because of the way bitmap fonts are drawn, light text on a dark
background will appear lighter/brighter/sharper. This is great if
you only stare at the text, but can quickly become distracting when
switching contexts: e.g. from the terminal to the browser. The eyes
take a second to adapt, which is annoying.
Overall, Terminus is a typeface I would gladly use in an environment
that remains constant on these fronts:
* Dark theme.
* Simple typographic requirements.
* Uninterrupted sessions. No regular app-switching.
As I can neither guarantee nor wish to uphold such constants, I have
decided to switch to the font I have used the most: Hack. It is a true
workhorse that copes well in a variety of scenaria.
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| bin | ||
| bspwm | ||
| colours/.local/share/my_colours | ||
| compton/.config | ||
| dunst/.config/dunst | ||
| fontconfig/.config/fontconfig | ||
| gtk | ||
| keyring/.config/autostart | ||
| music/.config | ||
| newsboat/.config/newsboat | ||
| NO-STOW-git | ||
| NO-STOW-neomutt/.config/neomutt | ||
| NO-STOW-xorg-extra | ||
| shell | ||
| tmux | ||
| vim | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| COPYING | ||
| README.md | ||
Custom desktop session (BSPWM) and configurations for GNU/Linux
My custom desktop session can be outlined thus:
- Debian stable because rolling release distros tend to be overrated.
bspwmfor fine-grained window management.tmuxto make the terminal power user even more powerful (no plugins).vimbecause I can't exit it (no plugins).- Carefully-defined font configurations to complement my hardware and satisfy my aesthetic preferences.
- Full integration of my Tempus themes for considerate colour contrast and easy live theme switching for the entire session.
- The superb Maté desktop environment as a fallback option and provider of some important programs and system-wide base configurations.
Demos
- Casts: https://protesilaos.com/code-casts
- Shots: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/dotfiles-screenshots
Get my configs
To reproduce my custom desktop session on Debian 10 'buster', follow the detailed instructions in my book "Prot's Dots for Debian (PDFD)": https://protesilaos.com/pdfd. It is freely available under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License Version 4.0 International.
PDFD will only offer guidance about the latest "fixed release" of my dotfiles. These are tagged with the appropriate annotation (formatted as .pdfd<?_label>) and are then synced with a separate code repo, titled "Code for PDFD": https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/cpdfd.
Do not track my dotfiles directly
My dotfiles' repo functions as a laboratory for my custom desktop session. I offer no support whatsoever about tracking it and may introduce breaking changes without prior notice.
Just use PDFD. It is why I spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning up the code, documenting it extensively, and ultimately writing instructions about how to reproduce it.
That granted, you can always open an issue here or contribute any fixes.
Copying
Unless otherwise noted, all code herein is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 3 or later.