Dev Fonts • Hacker News Board

Re: Dev Fonts

#101

Post by lucideer » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

Measter wrote: post #95

lucideer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why would copy-pasting force retention of ligatures? Ligatures don't change the underlying characters, only the graphical representation of them.

It doesn't. That's what I said.

Re: Dev Fonts

#102

Post by ossopite » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

I switched to coding in a proportional font, Verdana, a couple of years ago and never looked back.

That's the font you are reading this comment in, in fact.

Code is mostly words and words are much easier to read in a proportional font. Symbols are plenty clear enough in Verdana, all letters are distinguishable, and I don't use mid-line alignment so I don't see the point in a monospace font outside of the terminal.

Re: Dev Fonts

#103

Post by SebastianKra » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:07 PM UTC

Half a year ago, I configured my IDE to use a _duospaced_ font:

https://ia.net/topics/in-search-of-the-perfect-writing-font

It mostly retains the advantages of a monospaced font while being a bit easier to read and fitting more characters on screen.

I'd love to see more font-designers exploring this idea.

Re: Dev Fonts

#104

Post by smoyer » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

I've been using the OpenDyslexic font for the last few years and, while I don't believe I'm dyslexic I've found that it does in fact reduce eye strain while sitting in front of a monitor for long periods of time.

https://opendyslexic.org/

Re: Dev Fonts

#105

Post by matthewmacleod » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #91

Measter wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. A `==` is two characters long, while `===` is three characters long. Also, with the font I use (Fire Code) the `===` ligature has three lines, making it even easier to distinguish.

I just had a look at Fire Code. How do you distinguish -> with ligatures from → (an Unicode arrow)?

Personally, it’s never really come up. I have no Unicode arrows in my actual source code.

On the occasion it’s in a string literal or whatever the it’s pretty obviously different, because it’s a single-width character as opposed to the double-width ligature.

Re: Dev Fonts

#106

Post by Measter » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #101

Measter wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would copy-pasting force retention of ligatures? Ligatures don't change the underlying characters, only the graphical representation of them.

It doesn't. That's what I said.

Ah, so you did. My apologies, I misread.

Re: Dev Fonts

#107

Post by ubercow13 » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

thiagotomei wrote: post #89

ubercow13 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks very nice, but I can't pay that much for a coding font like this simply because until you load it into the various pieces of software you use it is impossible to know how it will render. Especially on a non-hidpi screen. Chances are it will look significantly different than the PDF once you load it into your terminal. Each of the three terminal emulators I have installed already render fonts very different…

They give a 30-day free trial, it seems (last item in the 5-reasons list): "Triplicate has no demo version, but I do offer a 30-day return option: if the fonts aren’t your style, you can cancel your license for a refund."

Ah thanks, I didn't spot that. That's good enough!

Re: Dev Fonts

#108

Post by nicoburns » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #58

nicoburns wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With ligatures, you can actually see the symbol you're representing, and not an approximation. I think the flip side (which is why many people don't like them) is that with ligatures you can't see the actual code that you've written, only an approximation.

When I'm reading the code I need to understand what it does, the underlying characters are just a medium. I can see way quicker that a complex boolean expression is wrong when I see ≠ instead of != and ⪖ instead of >=. I do agree with the Butterick that when presenting code to others, for example as examples, the ligatures are a big no, because in this case you actually need to see what characters you need to input.

In that case it works reasonably well, but how do you represent the difference between `=`, `==` and `===` in javascript. IMO =, == and === is much clearer and more visually distinct than ≔, = and ≡.

Re: Dev Fonts

#109

Post by indentit » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:17 PM UTC

gvx wrote: post #43

rvanmil wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To me, ligatures in programming always file like a kind of syntax highlighting if that worked on the character level rather than the token level. Suppose given `difficulty = 3` your editor would highlight the `if`. That's how these ligatures feel to me.

But most text editors don't render ligatures if the characters span token boundaries. Sublime Text at least doesn't.

Re: Dev Fonts

#110

Post by yoz-y » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #108

yoz-y wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I'm reading the code I need to understand what it does, the underlying characters are just a medium. I can see way quicker that a complex boolean expression is wrong when I see ≠ instead of != and ⪖ instead of >=. I do agree with the Butterick that when presenting code to others, for example as examples, the ligatures are a big no, because in this case you actually need to see what characters you need to input.

In that case it works reasonably well, but how do you represent the difference between `=`, `==` and `===` in javascript. IMO =, == and === is much clearer and more visually distinct than ≔, = and ≡.

Mainly a force of habit. But I agree that for equalities a split sign would be clearer for most people.

I won't be going around and trying to convince people to use or not use ligatures though. I feel that it is a very personal preference much like the choice of syntax colouring theme.