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Victor Mono – A free programming font

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Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#111

Post by mikekchar »

grawprog wrote: post #78
delinka wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fitting more on the screen horizontally. Wrapped lines are a different cognitive load. I personally don't care for the narrower fonts, but I can see the utility.

>Fitting more on the screen horizontally. But screens for the most part have only been getting wider. I could see this in the days of square CRT's but most screens are fairly wide these days.

Another person posted something similar in the thread, but I'll reiterate: for people with poor vision, narrow fonts allow you to increase the font size, have a reasonable number of columns on the screen and have it fit into your field of vision. It's a life saver for me (usually coding at 24pt on a 13" monitor, which is as big as feels comfortable for me).

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#112

Post by tworc »

smsm42 wrote: post #76

Cursive unfortunately looks very distracting. Having to context-switch when reading the code between two character sets is going to be exhausting - I felt it even when looking at the example screenshots, I can imagine how taxing it would be to go through hundreds of pages of code in this mode. The non-cursive letters look pretty clean but I'm afraid cursive kills it as programmer's font for me.

Been using this font for about 6 weeks now, and from my experience i actually found this super readable and easy on the eyes. Had to just make font size slightly larger in VS Code, but very happy with this.

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#113

Post by alpaca128 »

smsm42 wrote: post #76

Cursive unfortunately looks very distracting. Having to context-switch when reading the code between two character sets is going to be exhausting - I felt it even when looking at the example screenshots, I can imagine how taxing it would be to go through hundreds of pages of code in this mode. The non-cursive letters look pretty clean but I'm afraid cursive kills it as programmer's font for me.

The font includes both cursive and normal italic variants. The non-cursive version is in the files ending with "Oblique". I set the editor to only use cursive for comments, that works nicely for me - in actual code it would definitely be too much.

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#114

Post by macintux »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #109
macintux wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad hominem, no. Disparaging the interest, yes. It’s possible to explore a topic without the disparagement but you keep reverting to the “waste of time” theme, which doesn’t indicate an interest in learning or persuasion.

Ideas should be protected from criticism to avoid disparagement?...

No, but a discussion the merits of fonts they find interesting is not enriched by a troll who hides behind the fig leaf of “discussing the merits of the topic at hand to satisfy my own intellectual curiosity”.

You’re free to do as you wish, but HN discourages your hobby, and thus the downvotes. I just regret the time I’ve spent feeding it.

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#115

Post by tazard »

alpaca128 wrote: post #113
smsm42 wrote: post #76

Cursive unfortunately looks very distracting. Having to context-switch when reading the code between two character sets is going to be exhausting - I felt it even when looking at the example screenshots, I can imagine how taxing it would be to go through hundreds of pages of code in this mode. The non-cursive letters look pretty clean but I'm afraid cursive kills it as programmer's font for me.

The font includes both cursive and normal italic variants. The non-cursive version is in the files ending with "Oblique". I set the editor to only use cursive for comments, that works nicely for me - in actual code it would definitely be too much.

Oh thanks. I didn't realize you could enable italics only for comments. That's exactly what I was looking for!

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#116

Post by somebodythere »

jypepin wrote: post #16

I appreciate the effort, the font looks solid, but I really don't understand the new trend of using italic in the code syntax. It seems like every trendy frontend engineer has their sublime text or vscode set up with a font that uses italic for imports, comments, etc and I really don't see the appeal.

They look cool. The productivity gain from keeping things outweighs any productivity loss from the italic text being hard to read. That's just me, of course.

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#117

Post by jjeaff »

dvt wrote: post #88

> A programming font with cursive italics and ligatures is the worst idea in the world. This is absolutely horrible. BTW, I am really angry. I'm not angry, but I'm pretty sure it's objectively a bad idea. Provably, it's more difficult to read cursive fonts than, say, sans-serif monospace fonts. Not to mention that the argument that "people like different things" is just not very good. It's simply a bad design choice.…

First of all, readability of something is going to vary person to person. Studies may have found the averages skew toward less readable, but I doubt that applies to 100% of the population. Once you are used to it, it will hardly make a difference.

Secondly, it's only objectively bad in your contrived scenario where the only thing taken into account is readability.

I have been using a cursive font for terms like "public function" and other oft repeated phrases. The stark difference allows me to more quickly skip over them. I don't need to 'read' them.

But my main reason is I just like the style. I stare at code all day long. I want to make it a bit stylistic and fun. Lots of people also have backgrounds on their desktop, but a solid black background would probably be less distracting and make finding icons easier.

I also wash and polish my car on occasion, even though leaving it dirty would not affect it's primary purpose, to carry me from point a to point b.

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#118

Post by RBerenguel »

aasasd wrote: post #56
JasonSage wrote: post #11

Can somebody explain to me why narrow programming fonts seem to be trending so strongly lately? I really don't understand, personally. I have a much, MUCH harder time reading a narrow font. I also find it aesthetically inferior to a "non-narrow" font so much that even if it was as readable or more, I feel like I would have a hard time getting myself to use it. Is there some other aspect that people like, such as bein…

That's not narrow, though. It's very similar to a proportional font, like the one right here on HN. Which is why Victor is already in my notes under ‘try out,’ as I'm a bit tired of rather wide Anonymous Pro―like I get tired of wide Verdana or Gotham. But the too-geometric lines are off-putting.

Have you tried Monoid [0]?

[0]: https://larsenwork.com/monoid/

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#119

Post by faizmokhtar »

macintux wrote: post #35
JasonSage wrote: post #11

Can somebody explain to me why narrow programming fonts seem to be trending so strongly lately? I really don't understand, personally. I have a much, MUCH harder time reading a narrow font. I also find it aesthetically inferior to a "non-narrow" font so much that even if it was as readable or more, I feel like I would have a hard time getting myself to use it. Is there some other aspect that people like, such as bein…

I didn’t understand the appeal of narrow fonts until I switched to Iosevka, and now I’m a big fan. I don’t see any readability problems, I can increase the text (important for my old eyes) without losing horizontal screen real estate, and I find the overall aesthetic quite pleasing. https://typeof.net/Iosevka/

Thanks for this. I've been using Fira Code for years and recently switched to Go Mono with font size 14.

I tried Iosevka yesterday and so far I love it. I can increase the font size to 17 and not lose the horizontal screen real estate.

The ligatures and the slashed zero are definitely a plus!

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#120

Post by aasasd »

RBerenguel wrote: post #118
aasasd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not narrow, though. It's very similar to a proportional font, like the one right here on HN. Which is why Victor is already in my notes under ‘try out,’ as I'm a bit tired of rather wide Anonymous Pro―like I get tired of wide Verdana or Gotham. But the too-geometric lines are off-putting.

Have you tried Monoid [0]? [0]: https://larsenwork.com/monoid/

It's a bit better, but still its strokes are strictly same-width—overall it's a pretty uptight modern grotesque. The goals seem different from mine, I don't really need miniature text.

I'd really like me a humanist monospace font with a bent toward serif-style shapes―particularly, a modulated-stroke font would be cool. Grotesques get really tiring after a while.

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