Lisnoti
Lisnoti (/lɪzˈnəʊtiː/) is a proportional sans serif font designed for general use
but with consideration also given to making it work
- in maths, science and actuarial contexts, and
- for writing computer code.
Lisnoti is available in regular, italic, bold and bold-italic variants in
OpenType (.ttf) and web (.woff and .woff2) formats under the
SIL Open Font Licence (OFL).
If you’re interested in why Lisnoti exists, please see
this article.
Installing Lisnoti
Using Lisnoti locally
If you want to install Lisnoti on machines for local use
then the OpenType font files are
here.
Using Lisnoti for websites
The first option is to host the font files yourself
(i.e. store them with the rest of your website),
in which case all the fonts are
here.
The second option is to use the Lisnoti font delivery service,
which simply amounts to referencing the style sheet on this site.
(Background reading:
Google’s
guidance on its font delivery service.)
In essence, you want
- to include a link in your webpage to the lisnoti.css file at the root of this website, and then
- to specify Lisnoti as a font in your styles (just like any other font).
Here’s a skeleton example:
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://lisnoti.com/lisnoti.css">
<style>
body {
font-family: "Lisnoti", sans-serif;
}
</style>
</head>
Feedback
If you have comments on Lisnoti, please use
the GitHub repo discussions page.
Please bear in mind that I am not a typography expert, just a frustrated user.
Key features
Lisnoti is derived from
Noto's sans serif fonts,
but with the following adaptions:
-
Reliable distinction of upper case I vs lower case l,
and upper case O vs zero 0.
-
Consistent arithmetic, comparison, logic, set, n-ary and
other maths operators, e.g.
- arithmetic: − × ÷ ± ∓ ∞ (NB Noto Sans gets the minus sign wrong)
- comparison: ≤ ≠ ≥ ≈ ≡ ≢ ∝
- logic: ¬ ∧ ∨ ⊻ ⊤ ⊥ ⊦
- set: ∩ ∪ ∈ ∉ ⊂ ⊃ ⊆ ⊇ ∅
- n-ary: ∑ ∏ ⋀ ⋁ ⋂ ⋃
- other: ∫ ∂ √ Δ ∇ ∀ ∃
- Greek and Cyrillic letters – maths and logic make frequent use of Greek letters and occasionally Cyrillic ones too.
-
Consistently formatted digit and – if available – Roman letter sub and superscripts:
- superscript: ⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁽⁾⁺⁻ᵃᵇᶜᵈᵉᶠᵍʰⁱʲᵏˡᵐⁿᵒᵖ𐞥ʳˢᵗᵘᵛʷˣʸᶻᴬᴮꟲᴰᴱꟳᴳᴴᴵᴶᴷᴸᴹᴺᴼᴾꟴᴿᵀᵁⱽᵂ𐞲
- subscript: ₀₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉₍₎₊₋ₐₑₕᵢⱼₖₗₘₙₒₚᵣₛₜᵤᵥₓ
-
A reasonable selection of symbols, including
- squares, diamonds, rectangles, triangles, circles and stars: ■□▪▫▬▭▮▯▰▱▲△▴▵▶▷▸▹►▻▼▽▾▿◀◁◂◃◄◅◆◇◊○◌●◦◯◻◼◽◾⚪⚫⚬★☆
- arrows: ←↑→↓↔↕ ↖↗↘↙ ⇄ ⇅ ⇵ ⇆ ⇋⇌ ⇐ ⇒⇔ ⇦⇧⇨⇩ ←↑→↓
- ticks and crosses: ☐☑☒ ✓✔✕✖✗✘
- box drawing: ─│┌┐└┘├┤┬┴┼╭╮╯╰╱╲╳╴╵╶╷
- game characters: ♔♕♖♗♘♙♚♛♜♝♞♟ ♠♡♢♣♤♥♦♧
- misc but useful: ⌂☸ ♩♪♫♬♭♮♯ ♀♂⚢⚣⚤⚥⚦⚧⚨⚩⚭⚮⚯⚲ ⌘ ␣ ☉ ♿ 円圓
-
All the operators parsed by Julia
(which is itself a good test of a technical font).
-
Unicode mathematical alphanumeric symbols,
e.g. 𝐀𝐴𝑨 𝒜𝒲𝓐 𝔄 𝔸 𝕬 𝖠𝗔𝘈𝘼 𝙰.
(If you want all the above but with a monospaced font, then take a look at Julia Mono.)
Construction
Details of Lisnoti’s construction are set out in the
Lisnoti GitHub repo.