Greek: inconsistent sizing of small letters

[billziss-gh]

Thank you for adding Greek letter support in your recent release (2.2).

Like others I find the JetBrains Mono font very legible and consistent and this has made it my favorite font. Unfortunately I find that the new Greek characters lack some of that consistency and legibility.

Observe this screenshot from VSCode on Win10:

Notice for example that the circle of the small letter delta (δ) appears much smaller than the small letter alpha (α). Compare this with the circle of the small letter d, which seems to be inline with other Latin small letters. Likewise for small letters beta (β), theta (θ) and possibly (ξ).

I should note here that I know almost nothing about typography and cannot make any reasonable suggestions to fix these problems. I do know that the Greek characters are not as legible to me as the Latin characters. (I am a native Greek speaker.)

Please also note that I agree with observations made in #336.

[philippnurullin]

Hi @billziss-gh Sorry. missed this issue. The construction of δ was also changed in the e41fd05 it was made similar to the α ρ. The future modifications (heightening the oval) can result on less pronounced diagonal stroke in δ. I saw you updated to the corrected version. How is your experience with it so far?

[billziss-gh]

@philippnurullin thanks for your response and for considering this issue.

I include below screenshots of the font at different sizes. This is from the font that was posted in #336 some time ago. If there are important updates that I have missed please let me know. (Renderings from vscode on Win10; I can also try on macOS if you prefer.)

The situation is much improved with δ.

However some of these letters still look somewhat unnatural/uneven to my eye. I think the problem may stem from the fact that the "sxheight" (I may use incorrect terminology -- I based it on this article) of the letters may not work as well for Greek letters as it does for Latin letters. There may be nothing that can be done about this.

Some individual nitpicks:

• The capital letter Θ still looks somewhat wrong when rendered at small sizes. Notice how its horizontal line is not fully centered in this case.

• The capital letter Σ appears to have a longer "nose" than usual (see red arrow and compare with the letter Σ in Wikipedia).

• At present the letter ξ seems to be somewhat dominant visually. There is an alternative construct for the letter ξ which may or may not suit this font better. The rendering below is from Word using Verdana.

  

Thanks for entertaining these suggestions and for creating such a legible font.

[philippnurullin]

Hi @billziss-gh . Thanks for the detailed feedback.

• Θ diffidently can be made better. I will tune it in the next updates.
• Σ sure, will iterate on that more.
• ξ I looked at that construction but my general feeling was that it looks good in typefaces with open aperture, which is not the case in JetBrains Mono. But i understood that it attracts attention too much, so i will iterate some more.

[philippnurullin]

Hi, made a new iteration on Greek letters.
Θ and Σ should be better now.
Looked at the 3 different constructions for ξ. In the end this one seems more balanced to me. The horizontal stroke creates dark "hat" in small sizes and not a very pronouncing element. So give it a try and feedback is welcome.

[billziss-gh]

Thank you for these changes. I think the font looks much better now.

• Letters Θ and Σ look good and without out-of-place proportions or artifacts.
• Letter δ looks much better than the original version.
• Letter ξ looks good: I agree that it looks more balanced and I readily recognize it as ξ.

Feel free to close this issue unless you are planning to continue iterating on this. Thank you again for the improvements and for a great font.