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Ligatures in programming fonts

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Re: Ligatures in programming fonts

#11

Post by yorwba »

Arcanum-XIII wrote: post #8

It seems there is some confusion for the author between the display part and the on disk part. text will not be saved with the ligature, it will still be pure unadorned text when saved... and for the confusion that could arise between a simple quote and a typographic one, it's not coming from the font but from the editor rendering engine (word does those kind of change, IntelliJ does not for example, but both can dis…

I'm sure the author is well aware of the difference between encoding and display, since they have apparently designed their own fonts.

However, their argument seems to be that since ligatures are just a hack to make plain text look like something fancy, you end up with confusing interactions due to the lack of context.

Now I don't think this is likely to cause lots of problems in practice, since most people won't use both ligatured => and Unicode ⇒ in the same Haskell code; but in principle the potential for confusion is there. Imagine if some clever font designer made ' look like ` when between a space and a letter, the font would be unusable in any language where that is an important distinction.

Personally, I'm not going to use ligatures for coding, firstly because I'm accustomed to the "normal" look and secondly because fcitx makes it really easy to type arbitrary Unicode when I want it.

Re: Ligatures in programming fonts

#12

Post by rossy »

zepolen wrote: post #10
detaro wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's bad about them? (I find the arguments in the link interesting, but not all that convincing)

Can't guarantee 80 characters length easily.

This isn't a problem with ligatures that are designed to take up as much space as the characters they replace. Fira Code seems to have been designed with this in mind, so for example, the === ligature is exactly three times as wide as a normal character.

Re: Ligatures in programming fonts

#14

Post by pdkl95 »

idle_zealot wrote: post #6

I use fonts with ligatures while programming because they're more expressive of intent. Many languages use a combination of characters to form a single meaningful token, such as JS with =>. This token is meant to appear similar to an arrow, and has nothing to do with = or >. In this case, I find it preferable to draw a ⇒.

> they're more expressive of intent.

You don't control which font will be used when viewing your source, so nothing extra is being expressed to other people about your intent. Using a font with ligatures in your editor when you program doesn't record anything extra in the source code.

> ⇒

I find it strange that you include the proper way of doing this instead of using font ligatures: use the proper Unicode code point. Some languages already support Unicode operators, such as Perl 6 which, for example, accepts « » as a synonym for >.

https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/day-7-unicode-p...

Re: Ligatures in programming fonts

#15

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pdkl95 wrote: post #14
idle_zealot wrote: post #6

I use fonts with ligatures while programming because they're more expressive of intent. Many languages use a combination of characters to form a single meaningful token, such as JS with =>. This token is meant to appear similar to an arrow, and has nothing to do with = or >. In this case, I find it preferable to draw a ⇒.

> they're more expressive of intent. You don't control which font will be used when viewing your source, so nothing extra is being expressed to other people about your intent. Using a font with ligatures in your editor when you program doesn't record anything extra in the source code. > ⇒ I find it strange that you include the proper way of doing this instead of using font ligatures: use the proper Unicode code point…

Unicode sucks for this kind of thing, since it would go on disk. Even if they don't go on disk, you have to figure out how to break them up into multiple characters so they can be edited (so ⇒ must be two characters, which is messy). No, Unicode isn't the answer. It is the answer to deali with someone who isn't using a specific font, like readers on hackernews.

Ligatures are a cake and eat it to. To those who don't care for them, they simply don't see them. As they are under control of the font, editors don't need special support either.

Re: Ligatures in programming fonts

#16

Post by [deleted] »

pdkl95 wrote: post #14
idle_zealot wrote: post #6

I use fonts with ligatures while programming because they're more expressive of intent. Many languages use a combination of characters to form a single meaningful token, such as JS with =>. This token is meant to appear similar to an arrow, and has nothing to do with = or >. In this case, I find it preferable to draw a ⇒.

> they're more expressive of intent. You don't control which font will be used when viewing your source, so nothing extra is being expressed to other people about your intent. Using a font with ligatures in your editor when you program doesn't record anything extra in the source code. > ⇒ I find it strange that you include the proper way of doing this instead of using font ligatures: use the proper Unicode code point…

[deleted]

Re: Ligatures in programming fonts

#17

Post by robert-boehnke »

panic wrote: post #7

The first problem isn't really a problem, since ligatures are provided by fonts, not character encodings. From the Unicode FAQ on ligatures and digraphs ( http://unicode.org/faq/ligature_digraph.html ): "The existing ligatures exist basically for compatibility and round-tripping with non-Unicode character sets. Their use is discouraged. No more will be encoded in any circumstances. "Ligaturing is a behavior encoded i…

Isn't the choice of font inherently an editor feature like syntax highlighting?

Re: Ligatures in programming fonts

#18

Post by Stenzel »

I agree with the article, but the arguments the author gives are not quite spot-on. Ligatures render code unreadable, there is no way to see how to enter a particular character sequence that is shown as a ligature. They might beautify code for some individuals, but they should never be used for showing code in an public or explanatory context, like on the web. Some operators are no longer recognisable, a few just look wrong - a clear case where simplicity and functionality is sacrificed for style.

Re: Ligatures in programming fonts

#19

Post by rossy »

yorwba wrote: post #11
Arcanum-XIII wrote: post #8

It seems there is some confusion for the author between the display part and the on disk part. text will not be saved with the ligature, it will still be pure unadorned text when saved... and for the confusion that could arise between a simple quote and a typographic one, it's not coming from the font but from the editor rendering engine (word does those kind of change, IntelliJ does not for example, but both can dis…

I'm sure the author is well aware of the difference between encoding and display, since they have apparently designed their own fonts. However, their argument seems to be that since ligatures are just a hack to make plain text look like something fancy, you end up with confusing interactions due to the lack of context. Now I don't think this is likely to cause lots of problems in practice, since most people won't use…

I'm aware that Butterick is the author of several fonts, but this article has a surprising amount of vitriol from someone who should know that the choice of a programming font doesn't affect anyone but the programmer who chose it. During the article, he takes several opportunities to point out that his opinions are actually facts.

Typographers usually have a lot of responsibility because their decisions can affect the readability of text for many other people, and this is why sage advice from experienced typographers is usually very handy, but in this case, he's complaining about something that each individual developer has to manually opt into. This is outside the realm of normal typography that he has authority in. The editor settings of an individual developer are extremely personal. Developers don't follow trends just for the sake of it. They set up their environment in the way they believe is most productive for them, because they know only their output matters. If an individual developer believes they are more productive with Fira Code, that's nothing a typographer should lose sleep over. If I believe that I'm ten times more productive when I code in Papyrus, that's no one's business but my own.

Re: Ligatures in programming fonts

#20

Post by mg794613 »

Ugh to answer the last line of the author: I have been using them for that long and the up and downsides are very well known to me. He has an subjective opinion about them, states them as facts 'and everyone who thinks differently is just stupid' OK author...
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