Iosevka Comfy

Private build of the Iosevka monospaced font, with a rounded style, adjusted metrics, and overrides for almost all individual glyphs in both roman (upright) and italic (slanted) variants.

Iosevka Comfy is wider and more vertically compact than the standard upstream configuration. Glyphs are rounder and have tailed ends or serifs wherever those are required to both impose an aesthetic rhythm and keep characters distinct from each other. Roman and italic variants are made to look more consistent while retaining their stylistic features (e.g. the italics do not have calligraphic tendencies that greatly contrast with more rigid or straight roman shapes, but still use carefully selected glyphs that are distinct from their roman counterparts albeit in more nuanced ways).

The overall appearance of the typeface is optimised for small point sizes. This informs the choice of certain glyphs such as D with a top and bottom serif and a curved body to clearly differentiate it from the capital O, or an m with a short middle leg to prevent the letter's lines from visually blending into a box-like shape (always referring to small point sizes). For larger sizes, these details are not strictly necessary, though Iosevka Comfy should still look decent despite their presence.

Considering the line height and width as well as the desired appearance of each glyph, the optimal point values are: 8, 10, 12, 13. Other sizes which are almost as good: 9, 10.5, 13.5.

[ For the :height face attribute in GNU Emacs, the value is equal to the point size × 10. ]

Build information

Iosevka Comfy is configured in accordance with the documentation of the upstream project: https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka. This practically means that we define our private-build-plans.toml, install the npm dependencies, and then build the .ttf files with the following command:

npm run build -- ttf::iosevka-comfy

The last update to Iosevka Comfy was done on 2022-01-25 using upstream Iosevka version v11.2.7 at commit f630c223.

Each file is provided as-is in the hope that it may prove useful, but is otherwise intended only for my private use.

Character sample and common patterns

Note that for the sake of this demonstration, the point size is higher than the intended target range.

Comparison to base Iosevka

This is a regular Emacs session with the default font set to point size 10 (a :height face attribute of 100). Obverse, in particular, Iosevka Comfy's proportions (wider, shorter line height than Iosevka) and the less exaggerated differences between its roman and italic characters to make the latter look closer to their roman counterparts without detracting from their subtleties (e.g. for the italic variant of Iosevka Comfy the f is not cursive, the y is not so curvy, the descender of the g is not closed, while the t, i, l have short tails, etc.).

For Iosevka Comfy to have roughly the same line width as Iosevka, it has to be set at one point less. It still has a more compact line height. Compare the following screenshot to the one above: