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MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

monolisa.dev

161–170 of 294 posts

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#161
post #131

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.

I mean... The existence of ligatures is almost by definition strictly aesthetic. And on that measure, it either brings you a smile to notice that f and i, for example, are joined; or you didn't even notice it. That is, I won't claim they help readability. But they do make me smile, and don't seem to hurt. (I'm assuming they disappear on copy operations. Mac OS' habit of replacing -- with a longer dash is painful when…

There's a third option: "What is that?"

When I'm reading fiction, I generally don't mind ligatures. I find them oppressively obscurantist in any situation where I want to know clearly and distinctly what each character is -- i.e. code and science/math/engineering.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#162

There is a font on my KDE desktop called just "Monospace" and its a great font. I can't find a font file called Monospace. Does anybody know what the font is? I would love to have it on my windows machine.

I think you should be able to run `fc-match monospace` to find what it is resolving it to.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Does DRM exist for typefaces?

The shapes of a font cannot be copyrighted, trademarked or patented. The name can be trademarked. The code itself for the font is copyrighted.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#164
post #140

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.

Please stop it with the diatribes about ligatures. If you don't like them, don't use them. It's that simple. Other people do like them, and will continue to use and enjoy them.

Serious (if goofy:) ) question: How do I not use them?

My understanding is that if the font has ligatures then the way to not use them is to use a different font (which is fine - there's a lot of fonts out there :) ).

Is that the only way, or is there a way to disable ligatures but keep the rest of the font? Can you disable only some of the ligatures?

TIA!

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#165
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop it with the diatribes about ligatures. If you don't like them, don't use them. It's that simple. Other people do like them, and will continue to use and enjoy them.

Serious (if goofy:) ) question: How do I not use them? My understanding is that if the font has ligatures then the way to not use them is to use a different font (which is fine - there's a lot of fonts out there :) ). Is that the only way, or is there a way to disable ligatures but keep the rest of the font? Can you disable only some of the ligatures? TIA!

how to not use them is editor dependent.

but you absolutely don't have to use them.

regular fonts are basically "use this image for 'a', this image for 'e'" etc. ligatures are extra data that says "if you find an 'a' next to an 'e', use this other image in place of the 'a' and 'e' images". but the non-ligature versions of characters are still in the font for use when there is no ligature sequence (just put a space in the middle of any ligature in your editor and you'll still see the independent characters rendered in the font).

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#167
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop it with the diatribes about ligatures. If you don't like them, don't use them. It's that simple. Other people do like them, and will continue to use and enjoy them.

Serious (if goofy:) ) question: How do I not use them? My understanding is that if the font has ligatures then the way to not use them is to use a different font (which is fine - there's a lot of fonts out there :) ). Is that the only way, or is there a way to disable ligatures but keep the rest of the font? Can you disable only some of the ligatures? TIA!

Ligature is a optional feature, first the editor need to support them, but I guess most editors nowadays already support that. JetBrains IDEs come with JetBrains mono and with ligatures enabled, last time I used VScode I had to enable manually for my new font.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#168
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop it with the diatribes about ligatures. If you don't like them, don't use them. It's that simple. Other people do like them, and will continue to use and enjoy them.

Serious (if goofy:) ) question: How do I not use them? My understanding is that if the font has ligatures then the way to not use them is to use a different font (which is fine - there's a lot of fonts out there :) ). Is that the only way, or is there a way to disable ligatures but keep the rest of the font? Can you disable only some of the ligatures? TIA!

In JetBrain products: Preferences -> Editor -> Font -> Enable ligatures

So you can turn them off even in fonts that have them, but most fonts have separate versions with and without anyway.

Re: MonoLisa – A font designed for developers

#170

If you're willing to spend money on a font for coding, then do yourself a favor and take a look at PragmataPro as well. I bought a license (checks notes...) 8 years ago and it has served me very well. If I was not down to pay for a font, then I'd probably use one of Iosevka's forms. Personally, however, it became clear to me that just like my monitor, the font I spend hours looking at every day is also worth some mon…

Pragmata Pro is quite nice... but not for coding. I like narrow fonts. Barlow is excellent. News Gothic is fantastic. Geo Grotesque is super beautiful. But it just doesn't work for me when a coding font is narrow. Fonts like Iosevka and Pragmata are harder to read than needed and for no clear benefit. Especially when used for projects based on C and derivatives. If you ever find yourself needing to cram more symbols…

I like narrow fonts because my variable names are fairly descriptive. That said, it's just an option.
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