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Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

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21–30 of 246 posts

Re: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

#21
post #12

I'm not sure that ligatures would be an improvement for legibility or editing code.

I happen to like them, but the only one I'd put forth as a definite improvement is that JS/PHP's triple-equal === operator gets turned into three horizontal lines that take up more vertical space than the double-equal does. That can be the cause of subtle bugs, so I think making that distinction more obvious is a win.

Personally, I'd probably find it easier to visually mix up the two-line and three-line versions than to mix up the two-char and three-char versions when skimming code - but to each their own.

Re: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

#22

I'm mystified how any one finds these more readable. Form over function if you ask me.

It transforms them from individual characters being put together to approximate symbols into the actual symbols. The act of joining together particular character combinations into more aesthetically pleasing forms is common and very old practice.

It looks odd only because we're accustomed to seeing the individual characters due to display limitations inherited from typewriters and TTY machines.

Re: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

#23
post #15

I like switching fonts every couple of years just to keep it fresh. My font right now is Iosevka: https://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/ A font generated from its source code. You can build your own variant. It has ligatures as well. I like that it’s not as wide as many other monospace fonts.

Seconded. I swore by Inconsolata for the better part of a decade but within days of installing Iosevka I had it set up in every editor or terminal on all of my computers. And it supports programming ligatures!

Re: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

#24
post #8

I really like the giant, triple-line === ligature for JS in Fira Code. Makes it super-obvious when you are doing strict vs sloppy equality checks.

Sarcasm?

Why would it be sarcastic? The triple bar is also the operator for logical equivalence, which I guess is where the font authors got it.

Re: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

#25

I'm mystified how any one finds these more readable. Form over function if you ask me.

It transforms them from individual characters being put together to approximate symbols into the actual symbols. The act of joining together particular character combinations into more aesthetically pleasing forms is common and very old practice. It looks odd only because we're accustomed to seeing the individual characters due to display limitations inherited from typewriters and TTY machines.

I agree, except for the www ligature. It just looks odd to only have part of a domain name compressed.

Re: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

#26
post #18
post #10

My only real concern is that it makes 0x123 look like 0×123. Otherwise, pretty cool.

My concern is it made 0xABCDEF turn into 0xAB_DE_F. What happened to the "C"?

Given all three fonts show that issue, I expect TFA screwed up and forgot to put it in their edition buffer as they were taking screenshots.

Re: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

#27
post #15

I like switching fonts every couple of years just to keep it fresh. My font right now is Iosevka: https://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/ A font generated from its source code. You can build your own variant. It has ligatures as well. I like that it’s not as wide as many other monospace fonts.

Seconded. I swore by Inconsolata for the better part of a decade but within days of installing Iosevka I had it set up in every editor or terminal on all of my computers. And it supports programming ligatures!

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Re: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

#28
post #15

I like switching fonts every couple of years just to keep it fresh. My font right now is Iosevka: https://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/ A font generated from its source code. You can build your own variant. It has ligatures as well. I like that it’s not as wide as many other monospace fonts.

thirded. I love the customizability of iosevka, in particular the ability to turn on / off ligatures and manipulate the appearance of the @ glyph.

Re: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

#30
I love Firacode and use it in Android Studio/IntelliJ but it has this bug[0] where "=" is invisible in Gnome terminal. So, I had to switch to Fira Mono[1], the parent of Fira Code, from Mozilla. Fira Mono doesn't have cool ligatures but it's a good font and works pretty well.

[0] : https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/issues/162 [1] : https://github.com/mozilla/Fira

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