Jens, finally somebody did it!
You're using some of the x-height for the descenders, thus making the font's apparent size bigger. And although it's been done before*, this is the first bitmap font I've seen that does it very well. For example, the curve at the bottom of the bowl in the "p" effectively hides the misalignment (even though it makes the form smaller). And such curves are also present aesthetically, like in the "e".

* http://www.myfonts.com/FontFamily4.html

Why not also give the ascenders some extra room? At least you can lower the bars of the "f" and "t" by a pixel.

Furthermore, your widths have a nice humanism, as do many of the forms (like the "a"). And the caps too - I'd love to see more of those, in fact the whole character set, please!

The only important thing I'm unsure about is the semi-serifs. I think they do add a nice flavor to the design (and might even improve bouma formation - although your spacing is loose for that, in fact the spacing looks off in places too), but one bad thing they are doing is reducing the apparent height of the ascenders.

Overall, this is a groundbreaking design, which just needs a little bit of refinement to become highly usable. Congrats, and *please* keep it up!

(BTW, I'm not sure your site is working right.)

hhp

I hope i can translate the theoretical part of the "Diplom" in english soon.
But until that I would say a little about the philosophy.
The x-height was chosen by designing the font. First of all I want to make a Screenfont for a better reading and also a aesthetic look. So took a more classical style. I think the big x-height is better for reading. The Semi-Serif was made because a serif font is better for reading but not at screen. So I took semi-serif. So it improves the "readability".

Some words to the Spacing: That was the most difficult item for me. My pretense was to improve the "readability" and for this I deside to improve the spacing. Small spacing is hard for reading long articles. The wide spacing maid many difficults. Maybe because I don't knew anything about fonttechnologie at this time. But at some letters it needs realy a refinement.

Im curently develop a SansSerif called Standup (you will see soon a sample). Afters this i will improve NNF to a scalable Font whith hinting for all small sizes. BTW: Does any have a tutorial about hinting?

The site screentypo.org is beta. Maybe it takes some sec for loading. You will see soon the whole font and all "schnitte" (maybe cuttings?).

(dont understand? me neither *g*)

> I think the big x-height is better for reading.

Upto a point - the extenders do play a vital role in reading because they define the shapes of *words*, which is what we generally read, at least when reading immersively. On the other hand, the screen is a lot less immersive than paper, so I would say that screen fonts do actually need larger x-heights than fonts for print - and your x-height is great! You're leaning more towards *legbility* as opposed to readability (and the same with respect to your loose spacing), but it's a good decision. However, I think the ascenders are on the border of being adequately long, and their serifs might be increasing the problem.

> The Semi-Serif was made because a serif font is better for reading but not at screen.

Great logic!

I feel the semi-serif is generally under-rated, and it can play a great role in print as well.

> hinting for all small sizes

You might consider embedding bitmaps instead.

hhp

Now here is a Image of the NNF. Also including a bold and kursiv face