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Dev Fonts

devfonts.gafi.dev

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Re: Dev Fonts

#21

Post by Brajeshwar »

Narann wrote: post #4

Very nice! I tend to use tiny sized font and I don't see any option to change font size. I'm always surprised by the huge default font size in text editors and IDEs. So I ask: Is there such a "standard" dev font size every dev uses and no one complains?

Hey Narann, I assume you are in your early 20s.

During the early part of my career, I used to love to design and develop with very tiny fonts. In-fact, there were a time when there was a craze for Bitmap pixel fonts which looks the best at 8px. I used to build apps for Physicians who uses a hand-held device called Pocket PC[1]. My weapon of choice when it comes to fonts were these 8px bitmap fonts for the interfaces.

They look super sleek and smooth but the physicians keep complaining about the font-size. The clinics/hospitals were replacing pen-paper with these Pocket PC Devices and the physicians depend on them for their earnings. I learned my lessons and made the fonts bigger. Designs do not look so nice (at-least to me and my team) but they loved my work. It paid for them, their families. The last time I heard, they were still using the 'programs' (not apps) for over a decade or so.

Of course, my IDE had tiny fonts too. Then I grew and aged. By the time I crossed 30, my IDE's fonts were big enough and I began liking it that way. Today, I occasionally write code with "Monaco" font at 16px on a 5K iMac. One day, I might scale it and even make the text/content bigger.

Enjoy your tiny fonts while it lasts, you will also appreciate BIG text and fonts as you progresses.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_PC

Re: Dev Fonts

#22

Post by lucideer »

uallo wrote: post #5

More and more often, I see ligatures being used on such fonts. E.g. === or != are combined in a visually single character. Personally, I don't like that at all as I think it makes code less readable. It is probably something that you can get used to. But what exactly is the appeal of it anyway?

> But what exactly is the appeal of it anyway?

To answer this question you probably need to start broader with: why do ligatures exist in fonts at all? Then see if that applies to programming.

There's various accounts of the "reasons" ligatures came to be, but of the few I've seen all would (imo) apply equally to code as to language. The obvious one is pure aesthetic preference, but another is that ligatures came about as a way for business people of the time to differentiate letter/symbol-combinations for single repetitious use (as is done for operands: e.g. `===` has a single semantic meaning, it does not represent 3 programmatic operations in a row).

All in all though, I would guess this is about aesthetics mostly.

My own personal preference is to use ligatures in presenting code and avoid them in text editors/IDEs. I think this fits with traditional font use (writers would hand-write or typewrite manuscripts, ligatures would only be used by publishers/printers). It's possible presented code may "suffer" in readability for some unaccustomed to ligatures, so there's a trade-off to consider, but that's also true of books/articles using ligatures in natural language, and I think the problem is overstated in both cases. The nice thing is that copypasting the code doesn't force retention of the ligatures.

Re: Dev Fonts

#23

Post by rvanmil »

chrismorgan wrote: post #16

My favourite monospaced font is Triplicate https://practicaltypography.com/triplicate.html >: the only true serif monospace that I know of (though I have a vague feeling I found one other at some point). Every other serif monospace I know of is a slab serif. Triplicate’s variable stroke thickness is also exceedingly rare in monospaced fonts; almost everyone goes for uniform stroke thickness, as is customary with sans…

This looks really nice, too bad it doesn't (and never will) support ligatures. I understand the point the author is trying to make about ligatures in the separate blog post, but boy do I love my ligatures when programming.

Re: Dev Fonts

#25

Post by iruoy »

rpastuszak wrote: post #17
sondr3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks pretty, that was at least the reason I started using it. And now I’m so used to them that I can’t live without them, and I don’t get the “less readable” argument. Most of the fonts make the ligature the same width as the underlying characters, just making them look prettier. My font of choice, PragmataPro [0], has both variants with and without ligatures if you so desire. [0]: https://fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragm…

How much did you pay for it? I love typography but this looks quite pricey

An alternative that looks a lot like this one is Iosevka[0].

My favorite programming fonts are PragmataPro, Iosevka and Jetbrains Mono. In that order. I used to use PragmataPro for everything, but I use Iosevka for everything but my IDE these days.

[0]: https://typeof.net/Iosevka/

Re: Dev Fonts

#26

Post by osxman »

kxrm wrote: post #2

What exactly is "Language" supposed to do? When I change it, it seems to only change the theme of the code, not the actual code itself.

And apply that to all the font previews with the option 'Copy code to all'

Re: Dev Fonts

#27

Post by osxman »

krishan711 wrote: post #8
kxrm wrote: post #2

What exactly is "Language" supposed to do? When I change it, it seems to only change the theme of the code, not the actual code itself.

It's the syntax highlighting (you can copy paste your own code over the code thats there)

And apply that to all the font previews with the option 'Copy code to all'

Re: Dev Fonts

#28

Post by OJFord »

chrismorgan wrote: post #18
fyhn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For instance != is just a way to write something that looks similar to ≠. With ligatures, you can actually see the symbol you're representing, and not an approximation. I suppose that is the appeal. And it looks neat.

Trouble is, that argument falls apart because != is only akin to ≠ if == is actually =. If you use a language with := for assignment and = for comparison (or something similar), sure, making != appear as ≠ might make sense. But if you’re using almost any C-family language, you’ve already broken the mathematical model of what the equals sign means. After that, I side with nicoburns and say that now you’re obscuring wh…

So, use the right ligatures for what you're doing.

Iosevka has several presets, or can be completely configured: https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka#ligations

Re: Dev Fonts

#29

Post by fimdomeio »

lucideer wrote: post #22
uallo wrote: post #5

More and more often, I see ligatures being used on such fonts. E.g. === or != are combined in a visually single character. Personally, I don't like that at all as I think it makes code less readable. It is probably something that you can get used to. But what exactly is the appeal of it anyway?

> But what exactly is the appeal of it anyway? To answer this question you probably need to start broader with: why do ligatures exist in fonts at all? Then see if that applies to programming. There's various accounts of the "reasons" ligatures came to be, but of the few I've seen all would (imo) apply equally to code as to language. The obvious one is pure aesthetic preference, but another is that ligatures came abo…

In typography there are ligatures that exist because they help readability (ex: ff fi tt) and others that are pure ornamental (ex: st). Personaly I see coding ligatures as ornamental as I can't read === faster if all the lines are merged because I need a precision in the meaning of this symbols that I wouldn't need if I was reading text where I can use, - – — (minus, en dash, em dash) and while it might look a little off no one would lost the intended meaning.

Re: Dev Fonts

#30

Post by monkin »

There’s nothing better and more readable than SF Mono, which isn’t there(license), but anyone can download and use it. :)
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