Live data from Hacker News

Input: Fonts for Code

input.fontbureau.com

61–70 of 136 posts

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#61

Yet to find something that suits me better than Fira Code. It's a decently good-looking font with ligatures . I'm a sucker for ligatures.

Iosevka for me, you can custom build it with the letter designs you want, it supports ligatures and it's condensed without been cramped (also has Term, non-term and Slab variants in the same build). It's replaced my mono font everywhere , Fira Code is lovely but it feels way too wide once you've used Iosevka. The only font that comes close is Pragmata Pro but that's not free. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/be5invi…

[deleted]

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#62
post #60
post #52

It's again a good time to plug the best programming font, the open secret to many - Dina: https://www.dcmembers.com/jibsen/download/61/ Including its two TTF versions (which are separately notable for using obscure TTF fearure to achieve a proper pixelated look): http://chrisrickard.blogspot.com/2010/05/geenatcom-dina-ttf.... http://www.geenat.com/?p=66

Dina looks great in those images -- but at 10pt on my 1440p monitor in VS Code (Win10), it's basically unusable. And I have excellent vision.

One of the TTF versions scales up, Mr. FancyPants :)

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#63
post #23

To be honest, I never understood all these discussion about "coding fonts". They pop up every now and then here on HN but it always seems like bikeshedding to me. Don't get me wrong - I'm aware that there are some folks who may have a vision impairment or some other reason where it really matters. But apart from that, I've been programming for decaded on many different computer systems with many different fonts, and…

Way too many stock monospace fonts make it hard to distinguish between lowercase ell, capital eye, numeral one, and pipe. All of those except pipe should have different serifs.

(I feel like this is a problem even in proportional fonts, incidentally. I like sans-serif as much as the next guy, but if the word "Ill" looks like chicken-scratches then something is wrong.)

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#64
post #49

Yet to find something that suits me better than Fira Code. It's a decently good-looking font with ligatures . I'm a sucker for ligatures.

I loved Fira Code as well but it was love at first sight with IBM Plex https://www.ibm.com/plex/

Oh god, that website though. How many CSS animations do I have to suffer through before it lets me scroll down to any actual information? Make it stop!!

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#65
If you like crisp bitmap fonts, I recommend the Proggy line. http://upperbounds.net/ It's fantastic if you like small point sizes; Proggy Tiny is 6x9 pixels per character, and lets you jam an amazing amount of text on one screen and stay crisp and clear.

I've moved away from them as I get older and my vision recedes, but when I was younger nothing compared.

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#66
post #62
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dina looks great in those images -- but at 10pt on my 1440p monitor in VS Code (Win10), it's basically unusable. And I have excellent vision.

One of the TTF versions scales up, Mr. FancyPants :)

The first TTF link doesn't display anything on my machine (no characters display in the font install dialogs). Second version looks pretty rough scaled up imo.

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#67

Yet to find something that suits me better than Fira Code. It's a decently good-looking font with ligatures . I'm a sucker for ligatures.

As cool and readable as ligatures are in print design and typography, I find them to be unhelpful and even sometimes downright confusing when it comes to code. For me they violate a general (unspoken) principle of monospaced fonts, which is not just that each character is the same width, but that each character is discrete. It can be difficult to tell _how many_ characters the ligature comprises.

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#68
post #23

To be honest, I never understood all these discussion about "coding fonts". They pop up every now and then here on HN but it always seems like bikeshedding to me. Don't get me wrong - I'm aware that there are some folks who may have a vision impairment or some other reason where it really matters. But apart from that, I've been programming for decaded on many different computer systems with many different fonts, and…

I see this as the weakest and most permissible of bikeshedding, especially because it happens in spare time as nobody would ever seriously distract a project with a debate about IDE font choice.

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#69
post #67

Yet to find something that suits me better than Fira Code. It's a decently good-looking font with ligatures . I'm a sucker for ligatures.

As cool and readable as ligatures are in print design and typography, I find them to be unhelpful and even sometimes downright confusing when it comes to code. For me they violate a general (unspoken) principle of monospaced fonts, which is not just that each character is the same width, but that each character is discrete. It can be difficult to tell _how many_ characters the ligature comprises.

When do you need to tell discrete characters apart? Is it personal, rather than professional – something about the way things ought to be, from your perspective?

Re: Input: Fonts for Code

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iosevka for me, you can custom build it with the letter designs you want, it supports ligatures and it's condensed without been cramped (also has Term, non-term and Slab variants in the same build). It's replaced my mono font everywhere , Fira Code is lovely but it feels way too wide once you've used Iosevka. The only font that comes close is Pragmata Pro but that's not free. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/be5invi…

I paid for the original Pragmata font in 2004, and he has kept sending updates surprisingly often ever since. I suppose I upgraded to Pragmata Pro in 2011, so only 8 years of updates on that. Money well spent for 40 hours a week of use https://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/

I wasn't knocking Pragmata Pro and the dude has the right to charge for his work.

That said for my needs Iosevka and Pragmata are pretty much a dead heat and one is free and open.

If you prefer Pragmata then sure the the cost per hour over a decade is irrelevant (the same reason I pay out of pocket for intellij ultimate at work, work would pay for it but I use it outside of work and it's not worth the hassle).

Post reply on HN