the-monospace-web-pandoc/index.md

title, author, date, lang

title	author	date	lang
The Monospace Web	Oskar Wickström	August 2024	en

Abstract

Monospace fonts are dear to many of us. Some find them more readable, consistent, and beautiful, and than their proportional alternatives. Maybe we're just brainwashed from spending years in terminals? Or are we hopelessly nostalgic? In any case, I like them, and that's why I started experimenting with all-monospace Web.

We use the monospace grid to align text and draw diagrams.

The Basics

Look at this lovely horizontal break:

---

Or a plain old bulleted list:

• Banana
• Paper boat
• Cucumber
• Rocket

Trees

It's nice to visualize trees. This is a regular unordered list with a tree class:

• /dev/nvme0n1p2

  • usr
    • local
    • share
    • libexec
    • include
    • sbin
    • src
    • lib64
    • lib
    • bin
    • games
      • solitaire
      • snake
      • tic-tac-toe
    • media
  • media
  • run
  • tmp

Tables

We can use regular tables that automatically adjust to the monospace grid. They're responsive.

Name	Dimensions	Position
Boboli Obelisk	1.41m × 1.41m × 4.87m	43°45'50.78"N 11°15'3.34"E
Pyramid of Khafre	215.25m × 215.25m × 136.4m	29°58'34"N 31°07'51"E

Note that only one column is allowed to grow.

ASCII Drawings

We can draw in <pre> tags using box-drawing characters:

╭─────────────────╮
│ MONOSPACE ROCKS │
╰─────────────────╯

To have it stand out a bit more, we can wrap it in a <figure> tag, and why not also add a <figcaption>.

┌───────┐ ┌───────┐ ┌───────┐
│Actor 1│ │Actor 2│ │Actor 3│
└───┬───┘ └───┬───┘ └───┬───┘
    │         │         │    
    │         │  msg 1  │    
    │         │────────►│    
    │         │         │    
    │  msg 2  │         │    
    │────────►│         │    
┌───┴───┐ ┌───┴───┐ ┌───┴───┐
│Actor 1│ │Actor 2│ │Actor 3│
└───────┘ └───────┘ └───────┘

Example: Message passing.

Let's go wild and draw a chart!

                      Things I Have
│                                     ████ Usable

15  │
│                                     ░░░░ Broken
│
12  │             ░

│             ░

│   ░         ░

9  │   ░         ░

│   ░         ░

│   ░         ░                    ░
6  │   █         ░         ░          ░
│   █         ░         ░          ░
│   █         ░         █          ░
3  │   █         █         █          ░
│   █         █         █          ░
│   █         █         █          ░
0  └───▀─────────▀─────────▀──────────▀─────────────
Socks     Jeans     Shirts   USB Drives

Images