At the 10pt on non retina 0 looking like 8

[philippnurullin]

[AlsoScratch]

The problem I see is that the sides of the 8 are not contoured enough.
Anyway, have you tried slashed zero?

[yvvt0379]

Enable the stylistic set 'zero' if your editor supports. e.g. if you're using vscode, add "editor.fontLigatures": "'zero'" to the settings.json file.

[AlsoScratch]

Understood, but the problems I see @philippnurullin have are:

• It's not clear the dot in the zero is detached from the sides
• The contours of the sides of the 8 are not clear enough, failing to give the proper '8' shape

[philippnurullin]

The problem is cannot be solved by changing zero to slashed. It doesn't make any difference in small size. The possible solution is make sset with zero with different form.

[epa]

I find that even on a hi-dpi display the 0 and 8 are hard to tell apart.

When programming, distinguishing 0 from O is only moderately important. It just isn't a common mistake to mix them up, beyond the most basic beginner level. Unless you write l33tspeak you won't have long runs of characters where 0 and O both appear. And if you do somehow muddle them, almost any programming language will give a syntax error.

But 0 and 8, on the other hand, commonly appear next to each other in numbers and there is no warning or error from the computer if you confuse them. It's more important for a typeface to have a clear distinction between the different digits than it is between 0 and O, or 2 and Z, 1 and I, etc.

I think you should reconsider the dotted zero and either make it a much smaller dot, or have the 0 as a thin ellipse without dot.

[philgyford]

For what it's worth, having been the one to point this out and so feeling somehow responsible, here are some other examples of typefaces I happened to have installed, all in MacVim at 10px using Solarized theme.

Zoomed 400%:

Some are easier than others to distinguish, even with dots or slashes. But I wouldn't presume to tell the designers how best to fix this for JetBrainsMono :)

[jozsefk9]

For what it's worth, having been the one to point this out and so feeling somehow responsible, here are some other examples of typefaces I happened to have installed, all in MacVim at 10px using Solarized theme.

Zoomed 400%:

Some are easier than others to distinguish, even with dots or slashes. But I wouldn't presume to tell the designers how best to fix this for JetBrainsMono :)

I can distinguish better without zoom in :-) By the way, "a" and "o" in Monaco are almost the same.

[riggs]

The lack of distinction between the characters 0 8 B is my biggest criticism of the font. I've been using it since it came out, but have been dealing with a lot of hex opcodes recently where this issue is thrust front & center for me:

[astrolemonade]

Try the latest version, the zero has been improved

[philippnurullin]

@riggs This looks like one of the old releases of JetBrains mono on your screen. Try to upgrade to the latest version & see if you have more pleasant experience.

Overall, thanks for the input. I'll see what can be improved.

[yvvt0379]

Yeah, this is v1.0.3.

[riggs]

It's the current version in the 3 JetBrains IDEs I use (and update) regularly, so perhaps something could be done to include font updates more expediently.

[trygveaa]

Unfortunately, I think the 8 looks worse in 2.200 on my machine. It's a lot less clear in the middle and seems to be squished together.

2.200:

2.002:

This is with font size 11 in the kitty terminal emulator on Arch Linux, using a 1920x1080 96 DPI display.

[jozsefk9]

This is 2.200, 9pt, Konsole:

Works fine for me.

[philippnurullin]

The original request was that the 8 is too similar to 0 + B was added to the list later.
Here is a comparison. The difference in letters is achieved so i'm closing this issue.

@trygveaa Yes indeed the 8 can be made a bit wider. I will try to improve it the next update.

[yvvt0379]

Hey, so when will it be modified? At present the figure 8 construction looks inconsistent with font.