Programming fonts • Hacker News Board

Re: Programming fonts

#21

Post by micampe » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:22 PM UTC

pbnjay wrote: post #4

Looks pretty neat! - Can you render the fonts at higher DPI? It doesn't look good on a retina screen at all. Ex: http://i.imgur.com/HiclAPI.png

Unless it’s using the same rendering engine for the images that your OS uses it’s pointless anyway, as demonstrated by the fact that there is a “renderer” option on the page itself.

This is only meaningful as a comparison between those two renderers on an unspecified version of Windows.

Re: Programming fonts

#22

Post by jryan49 » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

jasonkostempski wrote: post #17

I use Terminus as my Linux terminal font and love it, however, I don't get to use Linux much and it's hard getting Terminus to work anywhere else.

Try http://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/ ?

Re: Programming fonts

#23

Post by jd3 » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:23 PM UTC

joonoro wrote: post #15

Ah this has reminded me how awesome gdipp is [0]. For those who don't know, it's an alternative renderer for Windows that makes the fonts look a lot better. The only downsides are that it hasn't been updated in years and that it breaks the font rendering in a few applications (notably Chrome and Skype). [0] https://code.google.com/p/gdipp/

I've always preferred MacType[0] over the old gdipp project. It improved upon elements from the gdipp project in many ways. You can try out my config if you like: [1].

[0]: https://code.google.com/p/mactype/

[1]: http://pastebin.com/YP23PP5v

Re: Programming fonts

#24

Post by baldfat » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

pbnjay wrote: post #4

Looks pretty neat! - Can you render the fonts at higher DPI? It doesn't look good on a retina screen at all. Ex: http://i.imgur.com/HiclAPI.png

When you say Retina you mean high dpi since retina is just a trade marked word for dpi of 220 inches or higher and means different things at different models.

Sorry to be a stickler but Retina is a worthless term and just causes confusion.

Re: Programming fonts

#25

Post by joosters » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:25 PM UTC

s9w wrote: post #10

psychometry wrote: post #7

No Menlo?

I don't know if I am allowed to use it. It's from Apple, no?

From the Font Book application: (sorry for the formatting. EDIT: Hey, it sort of worked!)

  Manufacturer	Bitstream
  Designer	Jim Lyles
  Copyright	Copyright © 2009 Apple Inc. Copyright ©  2006 by Tavmjong Bah. Copyright © 2003 by Bitstream, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
  Trademark	Menlo is a Trademark of Apple Inc.
  Description	Menlo is based upon the Open Source font Bitstream Vera and the public domain font Deja Vu. Bitstream Vera is a trademark of Bitstream, Inc., designed by Jim Lyles.
  Enabled	Yes
  Duplicate	No
  Copy protected	No

I don't know if that helps you or not? But presumably you can show images of the font in any case.

Re: Programming fonts

#26

Post by omgtehlion » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

joonoro wrote: post #15

Ah this has reminded me how awesome gdipp is [0]. For those who don't know, it's an alternative renderer for Windows that makes the fonts look a lot better. The only downsides are that it hasn't been updated in years and that it breaks the font rendering in a few applications (notably Chrome and Skype). [0] https://code.google.com/p/gdipp/

This is a matter of choice I suppose.

For me gdipp (or mac ftm) rendered fonts look like just crap. Never been typographic junkie though...

Re: Programming fonts

#27

Post by jdlyga » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:31 PM UTC

It's great that we have so many choices of great programming fonts nowadays. What's everyone's font of choice? I've been using Consolas for the last few years.

Re: Programming fonts

#28

Post by JoshTriplett » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

s9w wrote: post #6

grigio wrote: post #3

Nice! I'd like to change the default string to see how it renders in different fonts

You mean change it dynamically on the site? I wouldn't know how that would be possible. That would rely on browser rendering which is probably quite tricky to get it to look exactly like in editors. Not even mentioning the hassle with all the fonts and settings

One possibility: what if you used a version of libfreetype or similar, compiled via emscripten, and run it on the client?

Re: Programming fonts

#29

Post by CognitiveLens » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

baldfat wrote: post #24

pbnjay wrote: post #4

Looks pretty neat! - Can you render the fonts at higher DPI? It doesn't look good on a retina screen at all. Ex: http://i.imgur.com/HiclAPI.png

When you say Retina you mean high dpi since retina is just a trade marked word for dpi of 220 inches or higher and means different things at different models. Sorry to be a stickler but Retina is a worthless term and just causes confusion.

To any non-tech person, "high DPI" is probably more likely to cause confusion and is just as variable in definition. To (almost) any tech person, "retina" is common enough that everyone knows what you're talking about.

Being trademarked doesn't really affect the meaning of a word once it's part of popular parlance - Kleenex, Band-Aid, Hoover, Google...

Re: Programming fonts

#30

Post by LukeHoersten » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:32 PM UTC

jdlyga wrote: post #27

It's great that we have so many choices of great programming fonts nowadays. What's everyone's font of choice? I've been using Consolas for the last few years.

I've been using Ubuntu Mono for years and absolutely love it. Consolas and Roboto look nice as well though.