> But if we’re going so far as to bypass Chrome’s CSS engine, maybe we should try to bypass the DOM entirely. Seems like Atom will eventually just be a native app.
If it does, I'll reconsider using it. I truly can't stand JavaScript 'apps'.
A new approach to text rendering
111–112 of 112 posts
Re: A new approach to text rendering
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does code need to be monospaced? I feel like the only reason we all do it is that it's always been done like that so it feels wrong not to. The only actual reason I can think of for it is alignment, and that seems like a minimal benefit really. Variable width text is generally considered easier to read, so why couldn't this also apply to code?
Alignment isn't a minimal benefit; it is super important. It's not just for neatness; either. Alignment shows where differences are between similar lines. And not necessarily consecutive lines. For instance, if we rapidly flip the editing window back and forth between two buffers showing similar code, we can see the differences as the moving parts in a two-frame animation. Even in proportional fonts, the digits 0 to…
This must be why math literature has been using fixed width fonts for hundreds of years! No way you could ever align something with (hugely more readable) proportional fonts. BTW, numerals are not automatically same width in proportional fonts; a good font will often have both (and for tables you'd explicitly switch to tabular figures, which will align properly).