Condensed versions?

[cayhorstmann]

Love the concept, but the monospace font is (like most monospace) rather wide, which is a problem when writing about programming. Lines that fit nicely in a text editor need to be artificially broken in the writeup because they wouldn't fit on the printed page. My solution has been to scale the font--see https://horstmann.com/unblog/2010-11-22/fonts.html

It would be great if the scale factor could be an axis.

[arrowtype]

Hey @cayhorstmann, thanks for the kind words!

Many monospace fonts follow the width metrics of Courier, though typically (these days) with a taller x-height. This can be useful, for instance by allowing fallback fonts to give similar layout. Of course, condensed proportions can definitely be handy, to fit more content on a page or screen.

I've considered the idea of a "squished condensed" axis for Recursive before – basically, building in transformations without the usual condensed-style fixes to stroke contrast, etc. However, I don't have any current plans to make it happen. It would be a fun thing to do, but would take some time to get right! I would probably need some funding to justify taking on the project in the near term, due to competing demands on my time. Of course, the project is OFL-licensed, so anyone can make a fork and add this axis if they want to do it themselves.

That said, if you are writing about code and need something more, there are some great condensed options available already. You probably already know these, but two I like are Input Mono and Inconsolata.

Input Mono:

https://input.fontbureau.com/

If you need something open-source, Inconsolata has been updated with a variable Width axis:

https://v-fonts.com/fonts/inconsolata