Victor Mono – A free programming font • Hacker News Board

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#121

Post by macintux » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 7:50 AM UTC

faizmokhtar wrote: post #119

macintux wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I just discovered it a week ago via this comment and the resulting endorsements: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303410

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#122

Post by nkrisc » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 12:30 PM UTC

Semiapies wrote: post #82

nkrisc wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the author of this font pretty much made it for their own use, the answer to your question becomes: because that's their personal preference. No one needs to justify what font they prefer. Then they decided to be nice and share it with the world for free.

Thank goodness the idea that something is free must automatically shut down any criticism hasn't taken over. We wouldn't have anything good .

Not sure how you drew that conclusion. But asking "why ?" is not going to get you anywhere. Someone made a font for their own use because they personally enjoy. They then shared it for free with anyone else who might also enjoy it. There are certain color combinations I prefer for text and background that other people probably hate. I couldn't tell you why I like them, though.

Readability can be generalized (tiny text is almost universally difficult to read) but it's also very much a personal thing in other ways. You can criticize one's preference all you want but it hardly seems productive. I get a lot of flak for preferring green apples to red apples, but no amount of convincing will change my mind.

>Which only moves the question back a step. Why, exactly, make reserved words, comments, tag attributes, etc., explicitly less readable than the rest of the painfully wispy text?

I have no insight into the author's mind, but I can only assume the answer is, "because they prefer it that way." Why else would they have taken the time to do so if it's for personal use?

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#123

Post by rb808 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

aeneasmackenzie wrote: post #92

rb808 wrote: post #74

I tried using proportional fonts instead of mono spaced and it actually worked great. If you really want to save real estate I think that is a better way to do it.

Sadly doesn't work if the language typical format wants you to align things. Works perfectly in lisp or C though.

Usually the only important alignment is left side like Python and proportional works for those. Do you have any examples where it wouldn't work?

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#124

Post by RBerenguel » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

aasasd wrote: post #120

RBerenguel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've found Monoid to be one of the most "eye relaxing" fonts, but I have something for grotesque-sans styled. I use it with very large font sizes though, so the goal is probably different. Just wanted to make sure you knew of it!

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#125

Post by aeneasmackenzie » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 3:29 AM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #123

aeneasmackenzie wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly doesn't work if the language typical format wants you to align things. Works perfectly in lisp or C though.

Usually the only important alignment is left side like Python and proportional works for those. Do you have any examples where it wouldn't work?

Anything like this:

    foo(a,
        b)

Re: Victor Mono – A free programming font

#126

Post by alexeiz » Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

Letters are too close to each other on a normal DPI screen with the 10-12 point size font. Maybe it looks fine on a high DPI screen, but on my screen it illegible. For the reference, I prefer Iosevka and Fira Code for code editing and console.