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FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

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Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#131

Post by tracker1 »

tonsky wrote: post #48
ryukoposting wrote: post #37

I like Fira Code very much. I've been using it as my font in all editors and terminals for... 5? years now. Ligatures enabled in editors, ligatures disabled in terminals.

(creator here) Thanks! I’m glad you are enjoying it!

I want to say thank you for your efforts as well. Been using Fira Code for about that long myself. I also do like Consolas/Inconsolata and Cascadia/Caskaydia Code as well, but always come back to Fira Code for editing.. the extra spacing is just easier to grok for code imo.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#133

Post by tracker1 »

risico wrote: post #11

One of my 2 favourite fonts. I constantly switch between Fira Code and Iosevka. I just wish Fira Code had an Extra Light option, sometimes, depending on the terminal/OS I find Fira Code too chunky.

For consoles outside my editor, I tend to like Cascadia/Caskaydia Code a lot. There's a Nerd font enhanced version you can use with starship.rs even. YMMV though.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#134

Post by ku1ik »

wlkr wrote: 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/

Same here. Fira Code, then JetBrains Mono. JB Mono is very under appreciated, although it’s maybe just a matter of taste.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#135

Post by pmontra »

Stratoscope wrote: post #129
pmontra wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Elix…

I have also been using proportional fonts for at least 10-15 years. I used to use all the column alignment tricks like the one you showed, and stuff like this: do_something_special(first_argument, second_argument, third_argument); Then one day I renamed a function and the length of its name changed, and I had to go through all the code and line things back up again. So I abandoned this kind of column alignment comple…

Interesting. Did you edit the font yourself? How?

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#137

Post by WorldMaker »

Culonavirus wrote: post #74
_eojb wrote: 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.

The ancient Python maxim is "Code is read a lot more than it is written" and I've always found that to be true. Looking nice is a benefit to readability. Readability is a key part of maintainability (you have to find what you are about to edit first). I find that I'm more likely to catch simple mistakes with ligatures than without, which is also a boon to editing/maintainability. (For example of that, in JS/TS development Fira Code's === ligature isn't just wider, but has an entire third extra line in the vertical stack, making it in my opinion far easier to spot.)

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#138

Post by WorldMaker »

worksonmine wrote: post #110
matwood wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Ligatures seem like the light theme in your analogy. I do NOT want my code looking one way in the editor, and another when reading PRs on the web. Consistency is king, and this just feels like bells and whistles some designer came up with. Same reason one uses spaces over tabs, except in Makefiles because someone decided tabs are mandatory. With spaces copying the code from one place to another doesn't change the ind…

> I do NOT want my code looking one way in the editor, and another when reading PRs on the web.

Some PR tools let you select your font. I think more should.

For one example on the web today, you can use github.dev (shortcut '.' on the github.com page for the PR) to open GitHub PRs in the web version of VS Code, which will Settings Sync, including font choice, with your regular VS Code profile. (Though, of course, that uses the GitHub Issues and Pull Requests extension to provide PR tools, and you can also just install that same extension locally into VS Code and never visit the web in the first place and just use VS Code for PR reviews if you like.)

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#139

Post by vladvasiliu »

mort96 wrote: post #121
vladvasiliu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, I do not want >> parsed as a right shift when it's actually used as two adjacent template delimiters. I don't like ligatures either, but I think that this depends on the editor. For example, if typing Rust in IntelliJ, if you type `Box >`, it will show two regular ">" characters. But if you type `x >= 3`, it will replace it with a single glyph. https://ibb.co/Dzx0LFG

How about 'x >> 3'? I would be very surprised if the editor enabled and disabled ligatures in sections of code based on information from a proper parser...

I don't think it actually does anything useful with >>

I've tried both Fira Mono and Jetbrains Mono, it seems to barely get the two glyphs closers. Below are screen captures of Jetbrains Mono.

With ligatures: https://ibb.co/vQ3nCsd

without ligatures: https://ibb.co/DtD1P9X

But, to your point, it would seem it doesn't enable ligatures based on the parser, since there is a difference between ligatures active and disabled, and it applies on both lines.

Re: FiraCode: Free monospaced font with programming ligatures

#140

Post by Stratoscope »

pmontra wrote: post #135
Stratoscope wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also been using proportional fonts for at least 10-15 years. I used to use all the column alignment tricks like the one you showed, and stuff like this: do_something_special(first_argument, second_argument, third_argument); Then one day I renamed a function and the length of its name changed, and I had to go through all the code and line things back up again. So I abandoned this kind of column alignment comple…

Interesting. Did you edit the font yourself? How?

Yes, with the awesome FontForge:

https://fontforge.org/

I wish I could publish Trebuchet++, but it is based on a copyrighted MS font. Maybe I will contact them to see if they could give their blessing to this "derived work".

In the meantime, if you or anyone reading wants to have a look at it, my email is in my profile and I can send you a copy "on the sly". :-)

I have a couple of other improvements in mind. One is to add a bit of spacing inside parentheses, curly braces, and square brackets, but I'm pretty happy with the font as it is so far.

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