Oddly, this monospace version has a different style 'a', instead of the 'hand-written' original, which is unfortunate. I understood that one of the benefits of the original comic sans was that each letter was designed exactly as kids learn to write (e.g. no strange flourishes on the bottom of 'g' or the top of 'a'), making its legibility popular in classrooms.
I originally had the so-called single-storey a by default, but it looked too confusing at coding text sizes. I even considered offering a "purist" version with that simpler a, but decided against it (too many options would confuse buyers). In my opinion, the simpler structure of a is better described as "writability" rather than legibility, and just because the new design does not follow the original does not mean it's bad. Whether it actually improved is a matter of opinion, but I believe in my decision in the context of coding.
Yeah, I agree, it makes sense to target the legibility at small sizes, given the expected use as a coding font - rather than a 500pt poster printout on a classroom wall!
I wonder, is there any tool that measures the similarity of letters / glyphs(?) in a font, specifically as a way to highlight ambiguous letters? That might be handy when designing or choosing a font for coding.
I just gave it a try... It has ligatures listed as a feature, but don't seem to be seeing the conversion of char sequences like I do in Fira Code. (E.g., in Vscode or VS with ligatures enabled, => turns into a "fat arrow", === turns into "a 3-bar equiv", etc.)
You could provide it as an OpenType variant (so buyers don't really even need to think about it at all unless they really want it, at which point they already have it).
I was actually taught to write the "double-storey" 'a' (but not the 'g', although I later taught myself to do it in order to reduce ambiguity), so I suspect it could largely be something regional. I was also taught to write serifs and slash zeros, which felt unnecessary at first but it definitely helps readability, especially with letters like 1Il.
I've also received comments that my writing looks like an actual font, so I tried finding one on the font identification sites, but none of them are really a close match; a good description of it would be "calligraphic version of Times New Roman".
I'll never forget the teacher who marked my exam question wrong because I wrote the result as a slashed zero and not a regular zero. When I asked the Prof, he told me that "a slashed zero is the empty symbol." This was not an exam about sets.
But I learned my lesson and never slashed my zeroes again.
There's one other difference that makes the lower case "a" stand out. The other characters have a slight rightward lean(there's probably a technical term for that). The lower case "a" is the opposite, and it really stands out.
