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Dev Fonts

devfonts.gafi.dev

121–130 of 342 posts

Re: Dev Fonts

#121

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…

“ligatures in programming fonts are a terrible idea” I agree as well with the point about ligatures, but I find funny that the advice comes from a site that thinks straight up normal text with no hover, no distinct color, no distinct font and no underline is a good way to signal linked pages https://i.imgur.com/9iVMfgD.png (who would have guessed Racket was a link?)

I certainly don't blame you for not noticing the `#fbf3f3` background color on hover. However, it seems that every link is either small caps or has that trailing ° character. It looks like the former is used for internal links, and the latter for external. I agree that they're certainly not screaming, but considering that the author considers this a book, that is probably by design.

Re: Dev Fonts

#123
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 usually really enjoy customizing my shell and making it look pretty, but my first experience with ligatures was a bad one. I was learning LaTeX and my editor turned on ligatures for me (I think the vim-polyglot plugin was the culprit) and it was very frustrating. Ligatures in an unfamiliar environment make it harder to follow guides and learn from the code that you're reading. Maybe it would be a lot easier if I was using it in my native language, but it just struck me as an abstraction and one more thing to learn and keep track of.

Re: Dev Fonts

#124

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.

I’m changing my editor font to Verdana now... let’s see how that works out.

Edit: it feels so wrong! Let’s see if I can get used to it.

Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/lmOR9ze.png

Re: Dev Fonts

#126

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'm not a fan of symbol ligatures but what I really loathe are monospaced fonts with a single character width fi ligature so the f and the i are both half width. I've seen several websites recently using fonts that do this. It is very visually distracting, especially in code samples.

Re: Dev Fonts

#127
post #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?

> How is duospace for programming?

I just set it and forgot.

Now, when I switch back to Fira Code, the first thing I notice is how far apart the letters are.

> Breaking the alignment isn't an issue?

At worst, you're only ever half a character off. Unless I'm explicitly looking for it, I don't notice the offset.

...it might be an issue if there's a limited line-length and you don't have an auto-formatter that will take care of it for you.

...or if you work with tables.

But since I don't have these issues, it just all feels very natural.

Re: Dev Fonts

#128
post #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 fi…

This is a curious position to take given that it's mostly a personal choice. People will like what they like, and that's perfectly fine! No need to denigrate frontend devs, or anyone, for a stylistic choice.

Re: Dev Fonts

#129
post #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 fi…

> If you think they do, I'd rather change syntax highlighting to recognize !== and others as a single token.

Your syntax highlighter probably already recognizes single tokens as single tokens.

> It's like multi-select in text editors. When you think about it, it's actually an inferior form of search&replace.

I’m thinking about it, and it isn’t. Sometimes search and replace is an inferior form of multiselect. Multiselect is a less flexible form of macros, but provides immediate feedback.

> 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.

This is an unpleasant statement and apparently even you recognize that.

Re: Dev Fonts

#130

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'm not a fan of symbol ligatures but what I really loathe are monospaced fonts with a single character width fi ligature so the f and the i are both half width. I've seen several websites recently using fonts that do this. It is very visually distracting, especially in code samples.

Really? So it's not monospaced? I'm having trouble imagining any monospaced font doing this.

(The ligatures in fonts such as Fira Code take up the same amount of space as the non-ligatured versions.)

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