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Frank Lloyd Wright

Jaisalmer, India, 2009

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saturday, 4 march 2023

it’s rare to have an entry here. But 2023 appears to be a year of changes.

This all started innocently in 2022 with the acquisition of a Supernote A5X.. the intent, to delve deeper into digital journaling—eink reading being a primary driver for that thought. After a lifetime in technology i find myself gravitating towards the analogue despite my involvement with keyboards and optimizing their layouts for typing. And strangely, digital handwriting has rekindled my love of using fountain pens—i’ve never strayed from them for note taking, but journaling feels more complete with a “real” pen and paper or note book (as amazing as the eink technology of the Supernote represents—more on that later and how it will integrate into this site’s workflow.)

Recent software updates reminded me of the need to upgrade the VPS this site rests on.. an so a migration from a long unsupported Debian Linux release to Alpine Linux—here as well as the home base where Void Linux had previously served me well. Finally one distro to rule them all—the computers i dally with. More on that radical switch later.

Then there is the reorganization of a lot of the material posted that originally resided in colophon—it must have been strange for people perusing this site for information on keyboards and typography to be situated in that corner of the site normally reserved for a basic description of a site’s construction (even if fonts have played an important role in this site’s evolution). But honestly, the road traveled was never planned—these interests just morphed into deeper explorations at the time.

colophon articles were becoming a substantial portion of the site and with the slow personal transition to all things analogue, it feels appropriate to move the interest in eink usage of which the past years have been focused on dyslexic fonts to this corner of the site. So colophon will remain more hardware and technically oriented.

The changes are exciting.. though, in all honesty, they may result in even more diminished activity on this site! Reading and writing are satisfyingly complete activities. A sign perhaps of my age..

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ottawa font

thursday, 5 february 2026

the ottawa font follows on the heels of the gotham font. It couldn’t be helped -:)

Whereas, the gotham font has a very clean, linear architectural feel (with minimal descenders visually accentuating the horizontal baseline), the ottawa font re-introduces the cross-t descender (though much more subtly than the singspiel font)..

ottawa font

Whereas the singspiel font presents a visual rhythmic cadence with its prominent lower case f and t descenders, the ottawa font’s emphasis leans towards a more neutral presentation. The upward flare of ottawa’s less accentuated descending t (and f), adjacent to other descending glyphs, goes largely unnoticed (despite its frequency), instead, feeling more appropriately proportioned.

The font has a pleasing rendering, though, gotham’s leaner horizontal presentation should feel more familiar for most. i happen to like both these fonts and, so far, have be leaning towards this variant for its character and readability—despite the uniqueness of the descending t, it does render more legible.

As always, YMMV.

repos

This font may be found on OneDrive.

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gotham font

thursday, 5 february 2026

while a descendent of the singspiel font, the gotham font is a return to a more traditional visual presentation with fewer flares whilst continuing this site’s focus on the improved dyslexic legibility and readability.

KOReader in gotham

straight m

With yet another simple unconventional glyph shape change—replacing the familiar rounded double arch (shoulder) lower case m (singspiel’s earless-corner, notwithstanding) with an angular flat-bottomed m (very much a small cap)—the lower case m now stands out more distinctly from the very common shouldered n..

gotham font

This unconventional glyph choice is a striking contrast—despite the commonality of matching x-height characters to their capitals with the c o s u v w x and z—to the pervasive rounded arched m. Its vertical sides and angled strokes (legs) render—despite its narrower cell width—more distinctly than the familiar triple stemmed arched glyph (which becomes apparent with words containing both the m and n, and even more so when doublets of either letters are present).

The arched m does visually “flow” more pleasingly (personal aesthetic) than the angular straight m, though, the latter does offset this loss with its tighter cell width and added non-mirrored distinctiveness from the eared n.

As for the font’s name, the straight m compliments the font’s unique ascenders (and descenders), adding to the printed line’s “skyline”. “Goth”ic emphasizes its sans serif leanings (albeit, subtly tuned for dyslexia and visual flow)—it remains an exceptionally “clean” typeface.

cross t and extended f

also differing from the singspiel font are stem length reductions to the cross t and extended f.

The cross t glyph loses its descender in favour of a regular non-extended cross t—the neck being lengthened to balance its presence.

The descender of the extended f is reduced from the original y descender depth—the traditional depth when this glyph is extended. While the gotham font attempts more traditional profile, the descender is retained sufficiently balance its extended cap height—providing a less accented, yet naturally proportioned glyph shape to the remainder of the glyph set.

These shortened f and t descenders produce a tonal shift from singspiel’s lyrical form to a more Gothic or architectural presentation with a flatter more neutral outline.

gothos font

for maximum dyslexic readability, the serifed capital I and the (re-introduced) hook-toothed capital G are available with the gothos font. This font adds the fully extended f for maximum distinction.

gothos font

IMO the gotham and gothos fonts improve even upon their predecessors for dyslexic readability—the singspiel/songspiel and grotesque/groteske fonts—with the addition of the angular straight m.

The serifed and hook-toothed capitals of the gothos font along with its non-mirrored glyph sets elevate its dyslexic legibility (beyond even such fonts as the Atkinson Hyperlegible font, IMO) while adding the relaxed visual reading cadence of the non-kerned (pseudo monospaced) glyph spacing of the fonts representative of this site. All while keeping with an overall clean sans serif typeface feel.

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The gotham font has found its place in my reading (font) rotation—notably with the singspiel and grotesque fonts, completing my font trio—offering a visual change up for these eyes and, importantly, maintaining a similar word page density for the KOReader layout i impose on my content consumption.

The more i read with it, the more this typeface comes to the fore. Only with words containing a leading m did the glyph shape initially feel odd (against a lifetime’s familiarity to the arched m). Within words, the glyph visually renders naturally with increased legibility (especially with words also containing a n or a doublet).

As always, YMMV.

repos

This font may be found on OneDrive.

comment ?