Launchpad monospace font is too thin and hard to read

I'm using 4K at scale 200%, BTW. The problem doesn't seem to be so bad at 2K 100% when that should look practically the same. I'm starting to think our font rendering doesn't scale the weight proportionally to the display scale. But still, this is a recent regression in Launchpad itself.

Subscribed @petermakowski - could you weigh in on this?

Launchpad is now using the same Ubuntu Mono variable font that's used on the Vanilla Framework website: https://vanillaframework.io/

It is indeed slightly thinner, but the main issue seems to be due to us using a very small font size on launchpad.

This should no longer be an issue as soon as the following is released:
https://code.launchpad.net/~petermakowski/launchpad/+git/launchpad/+merge/444157

It's not the font size that's the problem, I can change that myself. It's the thin font weight on a white background that is causing me eye strain. And I spend multiple hours a day reading Launchpad bugs so this is quite a problem. Can you provide a workaround so I can change the font weight I see in Launchpad?

I created 2 custom styles that you could use via stylus Firefox/Chrome extension for you to choose from.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us

- font-weight of 500: https://userstyles.world/style/10230/launchpad-net-font-weight
- original monospace font: https://userstyles.world/style/10229/launchpad-net-monospace

I am now on leave until next week, but once I'm back I'll look into this more. We might even need to re-think the use of Ubuntu Mono font on launchpad if it's causing people significant trouble (or at least delay enabling it until we can give people an option).

Nice, thanks! I'm finding a weight of 440-450 looks best (and matches the variable-width font weight).

Is This Fixed ?? , the font size creates a really awful UI to work on.

No, not fixed. Comment #6 was just about the workaround suggested in comment #5.

Would you mind sharing a screenshot demonstrating the problem, I'd like to understand it a bit better. Also - is this in Firefox or Chrome?

The bug is the same in Chrome and Firefox. Screenshot attached.

I'm using a 4K monitor at 200% and I think at 400 nits. The new font gets drowned out by the white background. Seems like the thinness of the font is changing its intended colour from black to more of a grey. Using the workaround in comment #5 fixes the issue although a little too much. I find weight 440 is nice.

I've just deployed Peter's previous change, which increases the base font size a bit. https://code.launchpad.net/~petermakowski/launchpad/+git/launchpad/+merge/444621 is in flight to darken the colour.

Though Peter, I notice one weird thing is that bug descriptions and comments have a different font size - you can see that on this bug. Is that intentional?

Good spot. Not intentional, seems like some other styles overwrite the base font size here.

I've deployed Peter's latest changes. Daniel, does this seem better to you now? (I certainly prefer it.)

I think it's an improvement but not there yet. See the attached screenshot without and then with the workaround (forcing weight to 440). I think the workaround is still required to match the weight of the variable width font, and to be more readable.

It would potentially make everyone happy if the site didn't enforce a font family for monospace (or Sans for that matter). Then custom browser configs would be honoured.

Remember light is additive in two dimensions and black and white are not treated equally in vision. According to standard gamma curves, white pixels have roughly square of the visual influence that black pixels do.

Agree with daniel it should be upon user to select custom font, i am myself forcing ubuntu font with firefox settings at a size of 28 ! to properly use launchpad.

See also bug 2030840.

It might be best to raise this in the Ubuntu Mono font repository instead as it's an issue with the font and not launchpad itself.

https://github.com/canonical/ubuntumono-fonts/issues