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FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

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Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#91
post #42

"Oh, a post about a programming font; let's see if there are any comments not from killjoys who can't help but advertise their hatred of ligatures" *opens comments* *shakes head, closes tab*

Although what did you expect, since there isn't much else to discuss about fonts that isn't subjective. We could discuss slashed vs dotted zeros, I guess.

I like the slashes. I think they're fun and help differentiate from Os.

Can we get slashed 7s too? Maybe even slashed Zs.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#92
post #28

Ligatures, IMO, make for a bad coding editor experience. No, I do not want >> parsed as a right shift when it's actually used as two adjacent template delimiters. And no, I'm not okay with the inconsistency that results from the usage of different operators from one programming language to another. Want to change a != to a == operator? Enjoy futzing with placing the cursor properly. It's a cute idea, but I found it m…

> It's a cute idea, but I found it more annoying to use in practice. Agreed. Looks very nice in editor, but programming is not about looks. It's about ease of editing and maintainability.

> It's about ease of editing and maintainability.

What if ligatures makes it easier to edit and maintain?

I assume you only use light mode and the system fixed font for your programming?

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#93

" Ideally, all programming languages should be designed with full-fledged Unicode symbols for operators, but that’s not the case yet." One (minor) language that does have quite a lot of support is Rakudo which allows both unicode and ascii equivalents for many operators. https://docs.raku.org/language/unicode_ascii

Agda embraces Unicode. PureScript & Haskell (with the UnicodeSyntax extension) both behave pretty well with a lot of Unicode operators (but rely on bicameral scripts as the leading character for deciding if something like a value or a Constructor/Type). Not sure of its status, but ocaml-m17n is a way to get some Unicode support in OCaml which otherwise can’t deal with any of it.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#94
Last time this came up I really got value out of https://www.codingfont.com/ to compare fonts in a tournament style until I found a font I liked. Years later I'm still happy with my font selection. I consider this passing it forward.

Edit: There is annoying popup, but click away from it and you can do the thing.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#95

I don't see how ligatures make sense for code. For beautiful typography, sure, but not for text you edit with a cursor, etc. IMHO coding really needs a simple monospaced font. I use Input Mpno with a slightly squashed horizontal spacing, and an almost overlapping vertical spacing.

> * I don't see how ligatures make sense for code. For beautiful typography, sure, but not for text you edit with a cursor, etc.*

Ligatures are just presentational so they don’t impair editing. If you ever try them again and use VSCode, you might like the Disable Ligatures that dynamically disables them for the selected line or cursor position.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Coenraad...

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#96

Hi! I’ve returned once more to recommend the Input family of typefaces. https://input.djr.com/ I’ve been code using Input Sans a (gasp!) proportional coding font for years now and I love it. Input also comes in a monospaced version FWIW.

I've been using DejaVu Sans (a proportional font) for a very long time, maybe 10 years, after about 30 years of monospaced fonts. After all we know that they are easier to read than monospaced fonts, tabs or spaces are fixed length anyway so the only thing that I can't do is columns like

  a =   1 
  ab =  2
  abc = 3
Guess what, this is equally readable

  a = 1 
  ab = 2
  abc = 3
and some code formatters yield this anyway (eg: Elixir's, if I remember well.)

It's a very good exchange: a little feature to miss, much more readable code.

I gave a try to Input but it was not OK for me. I can't remember the details. I'm giving a try to Sweden Sans, from yesterday's HN.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#97
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised to hear that the eye actually does a lot of "preprocessing" for the brain.

Preprocessing is not the same as interpretation, in the same way that a pixel shader is not computer vision.

Everything is quite fuzzy in the brain... The eye already does basic pattern recognition (stripes, contrasts, rings).

One could argue that that is already part of the character detection/interpretation process.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#99
post #7

Of course, this is all very subjective, but I do find Fira Code to be a beautiful coding font. I also appreciate having ligatures in fonts nowadays. Fira Code was my go-to for a long time, but I've come to increasingly use Jetbrains Mono which is available under the same Open Font Licence and is quite similar (although slightly preferable visually to me). https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

I used Jetbrain's Mono font for quite a while, until I switched to Julia. I found Julia even clearer.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#100
post #28

Ligatures, IMO, make for a bad coding editor experience. No, I do not want >> parsed as a right shift when it's actually used as two adjacent template delimiters. And no, I'm not okay with the inconsistency that results from the usage of different operators from one programming language to another. Want to change a != to a == operator? Enjoy futzing with placing the cursor properly. It's a cute idea, but I found it m…

Idk, my editor/terminal disables the ligatures when my cursor hovers over them, so that's not a problem.

It's absolutely a personal preference thing, and I personally prefer it. At least for the languages that I typically work with. I could see it being annoying with certain languages.

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