Live data from Hacker News

Dev Fonts

devfonts.gafi.dev

111–120 of 342 posts

Re: Dev Fonts

#111

Is there a font you can recommend for the terminal? I am currently using cascadia code and I am satisfied

I started using Nouveau IBM a few months ago[0]. Unlike the int10h fonts that protoman3000 mentions, this is reconstructed using vectors; it doesn't emulate individual pixels in the font.

To pile on the nostalgia, I also changed my default terminal text color to monochrome amber (#FFB000) [1], even though I've never used monochrome terminals.

[0] https://www.dafont.com/nouveau-ibm.font

[1] https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/12835/exa...

Re: Dev Fonts

#112

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…

I agree with the author on adding ligatures where they are not needed, but one of the comments used in their justification is not quite right:

> Unicode [...] identifies each character uniquely. This way, software programs don’t have to worry that things like the fi ligature might be stashed in some special place in the font. Instead, Unicode designates a unique name and number for each character, known as a code point. If you have an fi ligature in your font, you identify it with its designated Unicode code point, which is 0xFB01.

This is true for the Roman script, but for many other scripts, Unicode does not provide dedicated code points for common ligatures. They would instead have to be denoted by two characters with a zero-width joiner in the middle (much like emojis).

Re: Dev Fonts

#113
In the category of dev fonts, I'll throw out JuliaMono: https://cormullion.github.io/pages/2020-07-26-JuliaMono/ (I am not the author)

Besides various stylistic choices (most-but-not-all positive, in my opinion), JuliaMono differs from other dev fonts by having _way_ more unicode coverage. (And from other high unicode coverage fonts by being monospaced.)

Re: Dev Fonts

#114
Of course a favorite font is very subjective but to me the perfect monospaced font already exists: Monaco. It’s great for the terminal and IDEs and beautiful enough to use outside of coding.

Re: Dev Fonts

#115

Another great aggregator that has been around for a long time and has 100+ programming fonts: https://www.programmingfonts.org/

I wonder if both these sites use some of the same code - in both ProgrammingFonts and DevFonts the language switcher is broken for me (Firefox, mac).

Re: Dev Fonts

#116
post #15
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?

I suppose some might say the code looks cleaner with ligatures and they better convey the meaning of the code (e.g. ≠ is easier to understand than !=). Personally, however, I like to see exactly what it is I am typing, exactly which symbols are being used. Ligatures distort that. Ligatures are fine when reading prose, but I find them too confusing when coding. That's a personal preference, though. I'm sure some peopl…

> ≠ is easier to understand than !=

I respectfully disagree with this claim.

It's conventional code notation that != is a Boolean test for (in)equality; that convention doesn't apply to ≠, which is overloaded in mathematics.

Re: Dev Fonts

#117
post #56

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…

There's a free monospace serif-looking font called Go (made for Go, the programming language), designed by Bigelow & Holmes: https://blog.golang.org/go-fonts

I've been using Go/Go Mono as system fonts for a while, and they're one of my favorite typefaces. Their spiritual predecessors, Luxi Sans/Serif/Mono, are also worth checking out.

Re: Dev Fonts

#119

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.

2.4rem for their paragraph font and a 1.75 line-height...

How is duospace for programming? Breaking the alignment isn't an issue?

Re: Dev Fonts

#120
I don't see ligatures solving any important problem. If you think they do, I'd rather change syntax highlighting to recognize !== and others as a single token.

It's like multi-select in text editors. When you think about it, it's actually an inferior form of search&replace. Inferior because it interacts badly with off-screen matches. I find arguments of kakoune users unconvincing.

My personal opinion is - and I'm fine taking negative karma for this - that ligatures mostly appeal to the front-end developers among us. To the people who abuse the words "beautiful" and "gorgeous", and admire web pages which have a single text column using up 1/3 of screen width.

Post reply on HN