Live data from Hacker News

Lesser Known Coding Fonts

vfoley.xyz

161–170 of 250 posts

Re: Lesser Known Coding Fonts

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Fira Code but it has too much flare for me. Microsoft recently came out with Cascadia Code which fits my bill. I don't know if it fits yours. It looks like you've already found your solution but I thought I'd pass this along anyway. https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code/releases

I looked at the issues page and was not surprised that Microsoft, in its Seattle-centric view of the universe, did not cover many international glyphs. Any comment on how many of these coding fonts suffer these issues? I am glad to see the screenshots in the article at very least thought to include Greek.

In fairness to Microsoft, Cascadia Code is still a young project. A couple of weeks ago, they had their second release which added Latin characters (vowels with accents, cedillas, etc.) Hopefully they keep adding more.

Re: Lesser Known Coding Fonts

#162
post #69

This rarely gets a mention but totally deserves one: Iosevka[0], a programming font with great ligatures, multiple weights, and customizable character variants to tune it to your preferences. It’s more slender than most blocky monotypes which makes it stand apart especially from more traditional choices like Monaco and Consolas. [0]: https://typeof.net/Iosevka/

I used Iosevka for a whole year and it is one of the best fonts I've ever used, amazing quality. I only changed to Input because I wanted to have some variety.

Re: Lesser Known Coding Fonts

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Fira Code but it has too much flare for me. Microsoft recently came out with Cascadia Code which fits my bill. I don't know if it fits yours. It looks like you've already found your solution but I thought I'd pass this along anyway. https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code/releases

I looked at the issues page and was not surprised that Microsoft, in its Seattle-centric view of the universe, did not cover many international glyphs. Any comment on how many of these coding fonts suffer these issues? I am glad to see the screenshots in the article at very least thought to include Greek.

I think a programming font should cover at least full Latin and basic Greek, and the Unicode blocks General Punctuation, Superscripts and Subscripts, Currency Symbols, Letterlike Symbols, Number Forms, Arrows, Mathematical Operators, Miscellaneous Technical, Control Pictures, Box Drawing.

Re: Lesser Known Coding Fonts

#165
post #99

I would really like to use a proportional font that has coding ligatures (such as -> becomes an arrow). Is there such a thing? Is there a way I could combine two fonts, a normal proportional font, and the ligatures from something like Fira Code , to create a hybrid font, perhaps with a script?

There aren't yet, but Iosevka now has an experimental proportional version. It does not seem to have ligatures yet, however that might just be a question of time.

Re: Lesser Known Coding Fonts

#166

Every thread about programming fonts is not complete without mentioning the wonderful website https://app.programmingfonts.org (no affiliation, I just find it really useful) which lists all the free programming-related fonts with live preview (for example every single font from the article, and every one mentioned so far in every comment in this thread is already there in the app) - it allows quick one-click preview…

what I don't like about thus site is that there are no large bitmap fonts (not even the x11 standard bitmaps, which are great)

What bitmap fonts do you miss? The site is currently restricted to fonts with a license that allow me to serve a web font for the live preview. So while there are a bunch of bitmap fonts in there, there might be some missing. I love to find out about new fonts though.

Re: Lesser Known Coding Fonts

#167
post #45

Every thread about programming fonts is not complete without mentioning the wonderful website https://app.programmingfonts.org (no affiliation, I just find it really useful) which lists all the free programming-related fonts with live preview (for example every single font from the article, and every one mentioned so far in every comment in this thread is already there in the app) - it allows quick one-click preview…

All free fonts I think? It doesn’t list for example Dank or Operator.

Indeed, just the free ones. Although perhaps I should list the commercial ones too in some way. That said, I do tend to feature them in the tumblr blog, so you can search that for a preview, background info and a link.

Re: Lesser Known Coding Fonts

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at the issues page and was not surprised that Microsoft, in its Seattle-centric view of the universe, did not cover many international glyphs. Any comment on how many of these coding fonts suffer these issues? I am glad to see the screenshots in the article at very least thought to include Greek.

In fairness to Microsoft, Cascadia Code is still a young project. A couple of weeks ago, they had their second release which added Latin characters (vowels with accents, cedillas, etc.) Hopefully they keep adding more.

Perhaps I am slightly frustrated that I have seen recent MS de-prioritize internationalization. Which is ironic because in the 90s they had Unicode support and features like RTL mirroring before a lot of others.

I am also a former MS employee, so maybe it is more of a loving criticism than appears on the surface.

Re: Lesser Known Coding Fonts

#169
I'd really like to see a monospace font with variable stroke width (i.e. with stroke width contrast). Current monospace typefaces seem to converge towards a single point in the configuration space, and by now occupy a pretty narrow range of variation—rather evident in the ‘Programming Fonts Test Drive.’ My eye pines for some elegance among the ubiquitous brutish utilitarian letterforms.

Variable stroke width is really uncommon in sans-serif fonts, so that some people associate sans-serif with fixed-width strokes. But no, such fonts exist, only they are mostly used for display, i.e. big titles and posters. While monospace is not equal to sans-serif, it for some reason rejects variable stroke widths even more strongly.

Linux Biolinum is one sans-serif example that can be used as body font. It's a straightforward antiqua with serifs chopped off: http://libertine-fonts.org/show-me/

Humanistic Rosario has almost imperceptible, subliminal stroke contrast: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/rosario (The font suffers a bit from sub-ideal kerning.)

Optima is a classical example, also reminiscent of antiqua. Lucida Grande (iirc) has hints of variable strokes.

The brain begins to panic at first when it sees stroke contrast but no serifs—but such fonts do tickle me somehow, especially with modern humanist approach. It's a pity they're mostly present on loud posters. Would be splendid to have me a homely playful and eye-pleasing font in the editor and terminal.

Re: Lesser Known Coding Fonts

#170

Every thread about programming fonts is not complete without mentioning the wonderful website https://app.programmingfonts.org (no affiliation, I just find it really useful) which lists all the free programming-related fonts with live preview (for example every single font from the article, and every one mentioned so far in every comment in this thread is already there in the app) - it allows quick one-click preview…

Doesn’t have Dina :P
Post reply on HN