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MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

monolisa.dev

121–130 of 294 posts

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#121
post #59

I am the only one who finds fonts a bit expensive for personal use? It is not a rant, I am not saying it isn't worth it, that font designers can't make money, etc... But that puts it on the same level as tools like Sublime Text or Beyond Compare. For me, it is enough of a turn off not to use a commercial font, especially considering that the free offering is quite good. I totally understand the higher price for comme…

I guess maybe because developers are the target audience and they happen to make a lot of money?

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#122
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love both Iosevka and Victor Mono, but ended using Victor Mono because it has script version for italics.

Does Victor Mono have nerd font support? Bc Iosevka does

  $ brew tap-info "homebrew/cask-fonts" --json | jq -r '.[].cask_tokens[]' | rg victor
  homebrew/cask-fonts/font-victor-mono-nerd-font
  homebrew/cask-fonts/font-victor-mono

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#123
post #59

I am the only one who finds fonts a bit expensive for personal use? It is not a rant, I am not saying it isn't worth it, that font designers can't make money, etc... But that puts it on the same level as tools like Sublime Text or Beyond Compare. For me, it is enough of a turn off not to use a commercial font, especially considering that the free offering is quite good. I totally understand the higher price for comme…

The font is used on the web page itself. You can trivially yoink it out of there and install it on your system if you really like it. I doubt anyone ever pays for fonts for personal use.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#124
post #59

I am the only one who finds fonts a bit expensive for personal use? It is not a rant, I am not saying it isn't worth it, that font designers can't make money, etc... But that puts it on the same level as tools like Sublime Text or Beyond Compare. For me, it is enough of a turn off not to use a commercial font, especially considering that the free offering is quite good. I totally understand the higher price for comme…

I guess maybe because developers are the target audience and they happen to make a lot of money?

But then developers also know how to use devtools in their browser.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#125
Please stop it with the "coding ligatures" already. They are not helpful and only serve to obscure the code being written.

This has got to be one of my least favourite trends in programming aesthetics these days. For a font claiming to "follow function" to devote so much effort to sacrificing function for the _vogue du jour_ is especially rich.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#126

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…

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.

Oof. Yeah, I do love the squared capital D in the DIN family, but the "ft" in Mittelschrift is a car crash.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#127
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I do find it hilarious that using tabs with non static tab stops basically solved this problem. Anyone that ever typed, on a typewriter, almost certainly used controlled tabs to line up data. I recall tables were easily done by just seeing the tabs correctly then proceeding in standard way. That said, I don't see my lisp coffee caring that much. Let expressions benefit from lining up. Most other code, though? Not sur…

[deleted]

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#128

Please stop it with the "coding ligatures" already. They are not helpful and only serve to obscure the code being written. This has got to be one of my least favourite trends in programming aesthetics these days. For a font claiming to "follow function" to devote so much effort to sacrificing function for the _vogue du jour_ is especially rich.

They are not helpful and only serve to obscure...

Personally -- after originally thinking like you -- I really enjoy ligatures in my code. I disable them for my terminal though.

The same font can work both with and without ligatures, so it's not a negative if a font supports them. You can choose whether to enable them.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#129
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…

You may be right on the main point, but I have a quarrel with one of your arguments.

> Put that in a non-proportional font, and the asterisks on the first line probably won't line up with the rest.

So lose the redundant asterisks. They serve no purpose. They make the comment both harder to read and harder to write.

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