February 8, 2026
Numbers gone monk‑mode
Show HN: A custom font that displays Cistercian numerals using ligatures
Medieval number font drops; the crowd jokes about loans and demands Unicode
TLDR: A new font turns regular digits into one medieval symbol per number, making math look like art. Commenters joke it’s not for contracts, debate Unicode standardization, and argue efficiency vs handwriting freedom—showing how playful design can spark serious questions about how we write and read numbers.
A developer just dropped a custom font that turns everyday numbers into medieval Cistercian numerals—single, ornate symbols that pack up to four digits into one visual. The demo shows “math that looks like art,” with party tricks like 1729 snapping into 1000 + 729, and commenters immediately started copy‑pasting to make squiggle soup. Cue the drama: one wag warned this is only for high‑trust vibes—“please don’t put my mortgage in monk math.” Another brought the nerd heat, noting these glyphs encode “about 13 bits” per character and wondering if other scripts do it more efficiently, launching a miniature bit‑fight about Chinese and ideographic writing. Then came the romantics: one commenter swooned over how easily handwriting invites new glyphs, while printing and typing lock us into rigid sets—the eternal battle of artful scribbles vs factory fonts. The standards crowd showed up too, asking if this should get official Unicode code points (that’s the global “character registry”), sparking a tussle between “ship it as a playful experiment” and “make it a real character set.” And yes, the demo flashing “Font not loaded—run the build” became a meme, because it’s not a Show HN unless something fails first. TL;DR: gorgeous, geeky, and gloriously impractical—and the comments are loving it. Learn more about Cistercian numerals.
Key Points
- •A custom font renders Arabic numerals as medieval Cistercian numerals on a demo page.
- •The Cistercian system represents 1–9,999 as single glyphs by assigning digit places to quadrants.
- •Users can type text, and copy/paste or search numbers, implying text remains accessible under the rendering.
- •Examples show how the quadrant structure can make some additions visually intuitive.
- •A note indicates the font files must be built/loaded; otherwise the demo will show a ‘font not loaded’ warning.