This is an Interface font, most suited for User Interfaces (Websites, Apps, etc). Almost all fonts that I have seen that distinguish the “O0 & Il” properly do not look good when used as an Interface font, but look good as an editor or something you do with it (Notes).

For instance, I set Inter[1] as my UI font in Obsidian, but I have set “Atkinson Hyperlegible Next”[2] as my Editor Font. I would gladly use such clean sans-serif fonts (Inter, Flex Sans, Geist, etc.)[3] because they are easy for the human eye to read quickly, even if there is a spelling error, and hence the distinction between the “O0 & Il” would not matter.

So, It Depends on the use case. “Atkinson Hyperlegible Next” is a fantastic, highly readable/recognizable font, but it will look pretty ugly when using it to design interfaces.

1. https://rsms.me/inter/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_Hyperlegible

3. https://vercel.com/font

One would think that this would be a fundamental principle in font design, distinguishing letters from each other.

Almost no fonts do this by default and instead offer it as context alternate, but I feel a font should always use a dashed or preferably dotted zero. Zero being slightly skinnier than capital O is not enough for rapid visual clarity.

Many fonts have a disambiguation option. Inter by default doesn't pass the I test - but it can be enabled.

Google Flex Sans supports font-feature-settings: "zero" - but doesn't seem to support lower-case l, upper-case I disambiguation.

Hello fellow Ubuntu font lover.

I have this set as my OS default and also forced for all webpages, I just find it so clear and easy to read. On the occasion that I have to browse the web without it, I don't struggle per-say, but I definitely find that I have to read slower, and find myself rereading words more often.

When I was in Italy, it took me far too long to realize on Google Maps that all the restaurants I was visiting started with "Il" and not the roman numeral two "II"

> I've stopped picking fonts that don't distinguish lowercase l and uppercase I.

Serif fonts solved this problem generations ago.

That’s a lowercase “L” vs. uppercase “I” for those of you as confused as I was.

Not only must the il1 O0 series be distinguishable, but they need to stand on their own. If I only see one in isolation, can I know if that it must be a capital O and not a zero?

> stopped picking fonts that don't distinguish lowercase l and uppercase I

Strongly agree on this, Bitwarden previously used a font that made passwords that contains i (or was it I?) and l difficult to distinguish.

It seems they changed the fonts since the recent UI refresh.

I wonder why the Ubuntu and the IBM Plex Sans fonts use a different style "a" for italic vs non-italic. I like the Ubuntu font and have used it in the past.

Lately I’ve become a fan of:

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Atkinson+Hyperlegible

Mainly for its attention to detail. It’s careful to make it obvious when it matters. For example, O and 0, lower case L and 1, and others.

One of the few unqualified improvements that “X” (aka Twitter) made was rendering the usernames in a font that has wings for the lowercase L

I also agree with you on the O0 I'll distinctions importance. So as google open-source it, someone can improved it freely.

I had a manager who preferred monospaced font, it definitely made it easier in a lot of cases. I also notice a number of them make i l and I and 1 distinct enough.

If the font doesn't support ligatures, it might as well be generated by AI.

> Words virtually always have redundancy (or context in the sentence) and it's fine in 98% of cases, but too often someone sends a token, password, name, or other string where you need to copy it out to another application to see it and just... why?

I think the right answer here is to avoid including 1/I/l/O/0 in your tokens. For example, I'm pretty sure that Nintendo gift card codes can't contain those characters?

monofur - my monospaced programming font of choice for decades now has an almost psychotic dedication to glyph disambiguation, every character is exceedingly distinct.