A data font, from the inside out

Datatype, by Frank Tisellano, is a variable font that renders inline bar charts, sparklines, and pie charts straight out of OpenType ligatures. Write {b:30,70,50,90} and get {b:30,70,50,90}; no JavaScript, no SVG, no charting library involved. It's also a total inversion of a 2018 piece of mine, A web font for data. tl;dr Datatype turns text like {b:30,70,50,90} into inline charts via OpenType ligatures: bar, sparkline, and pie, with weight and width axes. It rhymes with a 2018 piece of mine, What if: A web font for data, but inverts it: my version was a font for reading dense data, this is a font that is the data. The upstream project ships zero accessibility guidance; for any serious use, pair each chart with aria-hidden on the glyph span and a visually-hidden data table. There's a copyable pattern below. A data font and font for data# Back in 2018, while at EMBL-EBI, I wrote a long piece called What if: A web font for data. My problem was that life-sciences researchers stare at…