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MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

monolisa.dev

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Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#82

Post by notum »

StevePerkins wrote: post #52

I wonder how many people glancing at the landing page have browsed over to the download page, and discovered that this a paid font? To the tune of $69 to $239, depending on the options you want. If this were something really revolutionary, then okay. But this looks like every other Bitstream Vera Sans Mono variant, just tweaked to be a touch wider than Fira Code or Jetbrains Mono. But half of the fonts on https://www…

It looks like a lovely font, a shame about the price. They have, however, included it into their website and distributed it to my browser for free, without asking me first: https://www.monolisa.dev/api/fonts/initial

According to the EULA the font is now mine under the term "by downloading the software accompanying this license".

Correct me if I'm wrong please. /s

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#83

Post by moonchrome »

andjd wrote: post #78

I'm going to hop on my hobby horse again for a second: One of their first points is this: >Designing a monospace font is much harder than a traditional, proportional one: being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font. And they're absolutely right. But it begs the first-principals question-- why code using a monospace font? Today, every major editor that isn't terminal-bas…

Proportional fonts break code navigation, moving vertically is much more important in code than normal text. Also it's harder to line things up, and alignment is a good cue when scanning code.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#85

Post by IgorPartola »

StevePerkins wrote: post #52

I wonder how many people glancing at the landing page have browsed over to the download page, and discovered that this a paid font? To the tune of $69 to $239, depending on the options you want. If this were something really revolutionary, then okay. But this looks like every other Bitstream Vera Sans Mono variant, just tweaked to be a touch wider than Fira Code or Jetbrains Mono. But half of the fonts on https://www…

Also, how many people who regularly browse HN have seen a headline like "[Font Name] - A font designed for developers"? As a mild font nerd, I love that people keep making more fonts. But also:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#86

Post by john_alan »

thor_molecules wrote: post #76
moffkalast wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People charging $199 for a slightly wider Lucida Console, you can't make this shit up. The marketing is so outrageous. In case someone's seriously considering this, here are an additional two sites that have literally hundreds of CC0 and other free to use fonts, not just monospace: https://www.1001freefonts.com http://allfont.net DIN 1451 Mittelschrift is my personal favorite.

If you like symbols and fancy terminal stuff, I'd also like to recommend any of the Nerd Fonts - all free. https://www.nerdfonts.com/

Superb. Love this font.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#87

Post by toomanydoubts »

andjd wrote: post #78

I'm going to hop on my hobby horse again for a second: One of their first points is this: >Designing a monospace font is much harder than a traditional, proportional one: being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font. And they're absolutely right. But it begs the first-principals question-- why code using a monospace font? Today, every major editor that isn't terminal-bas…

I had never considered using variable width fonts for programming. I can see some minor issues, like vim users(on an environment that support variable-width fonts) now have no consistency on where their cursor will land when using j/k to move up and down lines, but I think I will still try it out.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#88

Post by vmception »

notum wrote: post #82
StevePerkins wrote: post #52

I wonder how many people glancing at the landing page have browsed over to the download page, and discovered that this a paid font? To the tune of $69 to $239, depending on the options you want. If this were something really revolutionary, then okay. But this looks like every other Bitstream Vera Sans Mono variant, just tweaked to be a touch wider than Fira Code or Jetbrains Mono. But half of the fonts on https://www…

It looks like a lovely font, a shame about the price. They have, however, included it into their website and distributed it to my browser for free, without asking me first: https://www.monolisa.dev/api/fonts/initial According to the EULA the font is now mine under the term "by downloading the software accompanying this license". Correct me if I'm wrong please. /s

yoink!

I saved the EULA in case your interpretation is accurate and the EULA changes.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#90

Post by chipotle_coyote »

andjd wrote: post #78

I'm going to hop on my hobby horse again for a second: One of their first points is this: >Designing a monospace font is much harder than a traditional, proportional one: being constrained by the same width of all glyphs can result in a boring or unreadable font. And they're absolutely right. But it begs the first-principals question-- why code using a monospace font? Today, every major editor that isn't terminal-bas…

> And they're absolutely right. But it begs the first-principals question-- why code using a monospace font? Today, every major editor that isn't terminal-based supports proportional width fonts beautifully.

There was a whole "coding font" family designed around the idea that we should be using proportional fonts for this, and it makes a great case...

https://input.djr.com/info/

...except that just about every time I've tried this, I've quickly run into places where trying to use a proportional font creates visual fails. Here's a simple one:

    /**
     * Render a given template
     *
     * @param string $_template
     * @param array $_args
     * @return string
     */
Put that in a non-proportional font, and the asterisks on the first line probably won't line up with the rest. Now think of someone doing visual alignment of assignment operators in a block of code like you often see in Ruby, or any code following the indentation standard where you line up parameters in a multi-line function header with the character after the open parenthesis like you often see in Python. Speaking of parentheses, can you imagine what will happen with proportional fonts and Lisp indentation? It'd drive the hardiest Emacs user to drink in short order.

Proportional fonts in editors are a good idea whose time probably just hasn't yet come. We'd need (a) to have editors that support "elastic" or variable tabs to keep things aligned in a truly sane fashion, (b) to re-teach a generation or two of programmers that indenting with the tab character is good, actually, and (c) to develop a few new conventions for what makes code look neat and pretty.

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