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Dev Fonts

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Re: Dev Fonts

#301
post #183

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.

What language are you using such that inter-line relative column spacing doesn't affect your code comprehension? > I don't see the point in a monospace font outside of the terminal Why not use Verdana in the terminal?

I'm confused. In every modern language I've used apart from go and terraform, only leading indentation matters and autoformatters do not apply mid-line alignment or align subsequent lines against characters in a previous line.

edit: and maybe Haskell? the layout rules are complicated

personally I don't think lining up e.g. variable or parameter names in c style declarations improves readability at all, and it pollutes git diffs.

but I do use a monospace font in the terminal because many command line applications align their output into columns using spaces.

Re: Dev Fonts

#302
post #288

Am I the only one who uses a proportional font for coding? I find it more readable for the same reason it's more readable in books and other printed media.

I would like to, but I hate tabs (due to the jumps it causes in horizontal cursor navigation, and also due to the nonlinear behavior when inserting/deleting characters preceding a tab in a line), so I would need an editor that widens spaces at the start of line to get sufficient visual indentation at four spaces.

in Verdana 4 space indentation is about 3 ordinary characters wide. I find that perfect. code indented with 2 spaces is more problematic though.

Re: Dev Fonts

#303
This is great! If the developer is reading this thread can you add an option to filter out ligature fonts?

Re: Dev Fonts

#305
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally, however, I like to see exactly what it is I am typing, exactly which symbols are being used. Ligatures distort that. I feel the same way. I do think I would enjoy programming in a language that used a slightly more extended set of real characters, as long as we had solid editor and font support so typing and viewing them wasn’t going to be an issue for anyone. For example, I’d like to finally have ≠, ≤ an…

Interestingly, the scala language previously supported either => or ⇒ and deprecated the Unicode character in favor of instructing developers to use ligatures for that aesthetic effect.

Pre-deprecation, there were formatters which would replace the two characters with the single unicode character if you wanted. If you use a language which supports unicode function names and operator overloading, you could easily add support for your unicode comparison operators.

Re: Dev Fonts

#306
What does everyone think about programming fonts with script italics (dank and victor mono)?

I've come to like them when italics are restricted to keywords. I've found that it makes it much faster to recognize the structure of the code.

Re: Dev Fonts

#307
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it isn't using a usual font license. It's not really clear under what conditions you can use/redistribute it.

It may not be usual, but what about the licensing terms is unclear?

It’s unclear whether I need to include a copyright for this font in every PDF I create that uses this font. SIL Open Font License explicitly doesn’t apply to documents using this font.

Re: Dev Fonts

#309

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?)

In short it’s a design choice paying homage to some other books, as well as to make the reading experience less distracting. He has a whole page explaining here, https://practicaltypography.com/how-to-use.html
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