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Programming Fonts – Test Drive

app.programmingfonts.org

281–289 of 289 posts

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#281
I recently found a font named "NSimSun" when customizing the windows console, and I am currently using it for programming. It looks like a serif font but it has finer details like a non-monospace font. I think it is because it was made for asian text, and each latin character does half the width of an eastern character.

Here is the docs for the font: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/simsun...

It feels unsupported overall, but I set it up in the terminal and text editors and I am happy with it, It looks like a proper font, and not a dumbed-down-to-align-to-pixels font.Also there are some missing glyphs like áéíóú, but maybe if more people use it, MS will improve the font =)

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but I'm assuming anyone using hexadecimal understands what the glyphs represent when they're used as part of a hexadecimal number representation. But the issue under discussion is being able to just do basic discrimination between characters – a necessary first step before associating them with their relevant value (e.g. as the tenth element of the sequence of natural numbers). So the issue with say, ∅ vs…

Now you're talking about Unicode issues, basically. "zero" and "oh" are in fact the same symbol, just like A is the first letter of the Roman alphabet, and the number ten in hex, and just like a slashed circle is the empty set, the Scandinavian letter, or the slashed zero in computing. In Unicode, we have multiple versions of some symbols which are dedicated those specific uses; there is a dedicated empty set, dedica…

What do you mean? 0 'zero' and O 'oh' are not the same character, either historically (the characters have distinct origins - with the Roman letter O 'oh' coming from Greek omicron, itself coming from Phoenician ʿayin; and the numeric character 0 'zero' coming originally from a dot notation in India (so dotted-zeros, which you mention using and I also prefer, are nicely appropriate) which eventually 'widened' to a hollow shape, adopted by Arabs and transmitted by them to Europe.), nor in terms of their encoding. But this isn't at all an ASCII innovation: the symbols were historically distinct and in fact have completely different origins.

So 0 'zero' and O 'oh' are not the same symbol. A is really the same symbol, whether in alphabetic use or hexadecimal, but 'means' different things in different contexts. (Even the alphabetic 'meanings' of A/a are not very consistent in English, in terms of representing sounds, and are influenced by context, so that a in cat and a in father don't 'mean' the same thing, in terms of representing sounds.)

To be fair, OP probably isn't actually using the Scandinavian Ø in contexts where it would be confused with ∅ (slashed zero), though in theory I suppose some language might support it as part of variable names etc.

But certainly I get irritated with fonts in which I (capital 'i') and l (lowercase 'L') look identical, as they occur in similar contexts and so increase cognitive load.

[Postscript edit: I was thinking that there is no visually similar character to a dotted zero, but then I remembered what upper-case theta (θ) is Θ, which does look awfully like a dotted zero.]

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#283
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest that using elastic tabstops¹ is the only reasonable system for doing that. Sadly, the industry seems to be stuck in a local maxima where the simultaneous jump to both using proportional fonts (which would be better) and using elastic tabstops for alignment (which would be easier), constitutes too large of a distance to bridge in a single leap, and either one by itself isn’t worth the effort. Of course…

I think it's even worse: the big problem with elastic tabstops is that you can't just adopt them on your own. You are requiring everyone who reads your code to use them if they want to see it formatted properly. Proportional fonts are different. Anyone can use them without interfering with readability regardless of the fonts and editors that others use. If you look at my code, you will never know whether I wrote it i…

> You are requiring everyone who reads your code to use [elastic tabstops] if they want to see it formatted properly.

It is not quite as bad as you make it sound.

While editors which haven't yet implemented the elastic tabstops mechanism may not align some text properly in files where tabs were used with elastic tabstops, the problem isn't that bad. All leading tabs (indentation) will be okay, and the chances of text not aligning correctly diminishes as the width between tabstops increases.

http://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#284

No one has mentioned Lucida Sans Typewriter. It was the default console font on Solaris, and it was may favorite code font for more than a decade. I even made a Windows version of that font, for my own use, using a bitmapped font editor. Here's a screenshot of Solaris showing that font: http://agilo.acjs.net/files/screenshot_solaris.png You can buy it from Adobe: https://www.fonts.com/font/adobe/lucida-sans-typewrite…

Ah, I mentioned it a little while ago in another comment thread. Microsoft bundled it with older versions of Office and Windows, and is included in their TrueType Font Pack[1] [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/lucida...

Also in the JRE downloads at https://www.java.com/download/ in the lib/fonts sub-dir since forever.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#285
post #44

I'm surprised that the list doesn't mention consolas. It ships default with visual studio and it's so good that I use it on arch Linux as my terminal font and with intellij. It was designed with programming in mind and has some nifty characteristics like a slash through zero. This list also misses out on 'operator mono' which is a well thought out font for programming.

Hi, I'm the author of programmingfonts.org. Operator Mono certainly is pretty. I always loved consolas on Windows (honestly, it's the only thing that rendered properly on Win7). That said, I can only include fonts that are freely available, or where the owner of the font allows me to (in the case of Input Mono). I have tried for a few others, but haven't been so lucky there. So, no proprietary or otherwise commercial…

It would be great if I can filter those fonts that support ligatures (Like Fira Code).

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#286
post #161

It drives me crazy when fonts look at the old convention of "strike through zero" and for some reason decides they need to be different from the convention and allow the strike to pass the edges of the zero circle. "Anka/Coder" in the linked article is guilty of this. When the strike passes the edge of the circle, it's no longer a zero, it's a Danish or Norwegian "Ö" (Ø). It's been a part of their alphabet for centur…

need to be different from the convention and allow the strike to pass the edges of the zero circle For what it's worth, the first machines I ever did any work with had the zero with the slash through it. That's because the output was to a teletype which printed the letter O, then went back a space and punched a / on top of it. They also used a capital P for a question mark. Some printouts were horrific to read becaus…

> So I think that for computing the 0 with a slash extending outside the line predates the 0 with the slash entirely inside the line.

For computing, sure. But the Danish letter pre-dates computers, likely by centuries, so the point still stands that an effort should be made to separate the two if at all possible. In your case it wasn't so much a choice as a result of technical limitations.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#287
Excellent website! May I suggest:

1. Show an indicator which font is currently selected.

2. Allow users to save their favorites, so they can find what they like faster next time they visit.

Thanks for sharing it, it's very useful :)

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#288
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a look at iosevka - it definitely seems nicer than many of the others, but it still feels too vertical when compared to DejaVu in my opinion. Is there something that sold you on it?

Well, it certainly is more vertical. The increased x-height allows it to be readable at small sizes (and fit more horizontally) which looks great in the terminal and editor, but maybe a bit odd on the test page.

Well, a week later and I think I'm a convert. I didn't like the look at first, but after using it in my IDE and actually typing with it, it's quite nice.

Thanks.

Re: Programming Fonts – Test Drive

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm the author of programmingfonts.org. Operator Mono certainly is pretty. I always loved consolas on Windows (honestly, it's the only thing that rendered properly on Win7). That said, I can only include fonts that are freely available, or where the owner of the font allows me to (in the case of Input Mono). I have tried for a few others, but haven't been so lucky there. So, no proprietary or otherwise commercial…

It would be great if I can filter those fonts that support ligatures (Like Fira Code).

Some that have ligatures state it after the year they cameo out. For fonts that don't have ligatures on their own you could use something like Ligaturizer. This adds ligatures based on the Fira Code font to any other font. These ligatures are taken verbatim from Fira Code though, so some will not match perfectly with their non-ligature counterpart.
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