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JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers

jetbrains.com

121–130 of 207 posts

Re: JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers

#123
post #14

We should take a lesson from the FAQ about license. It is the simplest yet most useful one I have seen! -- May I install JetBrains Mono on my system and use it in any code editor? -> YES. May I make and print a poster with JetBrains Mono? -> YES. May I use JetBrains Mono in my logotype? -> YES. May I use JetBrains Mono on my website? -> YES. May I use JetBrains Mono in my applications? -> YES. May I design my own fon…

IANAL - I am pretty certain you can do most of those things with all fonts regardless of license. Copyrights on fonts is almost non-existent. The only thing copyrightable is the actual "code" used in the font. (maybe delivering their files on a website is an issue?) This is based on research I did years ago when dealing with a copyright legal case where I worked. The summation is that you can't copyright the alphabet…

You can copy a font (as in, design another font that looks exactly like the original) and then do whatever you want. I think people call that tracing a font, and is very common with Helvetica, of which a lot of alternate fonts have made "clones" of.

But If I take a font file someone else made, not one I created myself to look like it, then its a whole other story. The font industry is cutthroat and quite lawyer happy, too (which is why tracing them to make your own is so popular...and brutally expensive if you hire a contractor to do it for you). You still usually come up ahead if you're a big company though by making your own.

Re: JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers

#124

Great to see that they’ve attributed Nikita Prokopov, the creator of FiraCode. While not the first, he expanded the ligatures in Hack, and Hasklig fonts and Jetbrains eventually bundled Firacode in their products. Quite a nice course of open source development over the years (I have been following the updates since ~2016).

You know that @tonsky works for them now, right?

Re: JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers

#125
post #65

I always applaud efforts at new typefaces, but unfortunately I feel this is a badly designed typeface that is worse for legibility, not better. Addressing their three main points in turn: > 1. Increased height for a better reading experience A high x-height is good for coding fonts, but this x-height is now too high. To my eye, this is now at the point where lowercase letters are getting harder to distinguish from up…

I misread 'a's as 'o's in the example provided. Probably result of all three points combined...

I'm super confused, are the using a... well, I don't know the terms, but a fancy "a" for the straight face and a simple "a" that's the circle-bar O|-shaped "a" for italics?

Is that common in fonts and I never noticed before?

Re: JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers

#126
post #118

Can I control which weight is used in JetBrains IDEs for "bold" text? It looks to be using the bold font weight, when I'd prefer to use medium.

For multi-weight font they shows up as different font in the list. Fire Code light, Fire Code medium, ...

They do in Settings > Editor > Font, but AFAICT I can't control more than the main editor font.

For example: Settings > Editor > Code Style > Style Sheets > CSS <-- no way to control the font weight used for bold-rendered property values

Re: JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers

#127

I always applaud efforts at new typefaces, but unfortunately I feel this is a badly designed typeface that is worse for legibility, not better. Addressing their three main points in turn: > 1. Increased height for a better reading experience A high x-height is good for coding fonts, but this x-height is now too high. To my eye, this is now at the point where lowercase letters are getting harder to distinguish from up…

I know absolutely zero things about font design, but there's something profoundly uncomfortable about that short-stem "q".

Re: JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers

#128
Need to check it out, I think my only concern that may be missing or il-formed would be box and line drawing characters... So many fixed-width fonts get this wrong... Inconsolata, for example has taken a number of revisions to support these characters properly.

I will say, I do like a few of the changes, but not sure if I'll be switching from Inconsolata/Consolas any time soon.

Re: JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers

#129

I like it, this might finally be the font that gets me to drop Fira Code. It's missing Powerline symbols, though, which is a strange omission for a developer font in 2020.

This. Makes it hard for me to use it for VIM as my terminal needs Powerline. It's otherwise a very nice font.

I think it makes sense that they didn't take powerline into account because I'm assuming this font will become the default for jetbrains editors. Their solution to your wanting to use this font in vim is probably "use vim in our editor instead..."

Re: JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers

#130
post #17
post #2

I was disappointed that despite presenting the cookie banner as if it were a terminal, the options did not accept keyboard input [Y]es, I agree [N]o, thanks Ok on topic: I'm never sure what to think of these "developer" fonts that make use of ligatures for combinations like ==, >=, ->, =>, etc. On one hand they do look really nice, but I always can't help but feel it would actually make things just a little bit harde…

With a good deal of skepticism, I switched the environment where I do about half of my work to a font with ligatures some time ago. Just to try it out for a while. I happily forgot that I had done it as a trial, and upon reading this headline caught myself hoping that there would be ligatures. I actually find that it provides an almost haptic feedback when going between things like =, == and ===, and I think I miss i…

For some reason, I just don't like the spacing in Fira Code... I really like Inconsolata/Consolas myself... I've tried both, but it just feels off to me.

Aside: Hopefully this font has box and line art characters and they align properly... this is a huge short coming in a number of fixed-width fonts that should be rectified.

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