Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

berkeleygraphics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 94 posts

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#51

Post by jxy »

huhtenberg wrote: post #8
AJRF wrote: post #4

I paid for this font. I can't believe it, but I just kept coming back to the webpage every week thinking "Aww dang its nice, but no way would I ever pay $75 for a font for personal use". But I kept coming back. Again and again, just looking through their page. I tried the trial. I eventually caved. A weird moment for me, but I bloody love this font and I frequently notice how nice it is in all my IDEs. I sound like a…

The website is fantastic. Font looks great and samples are an eye candy, so tried it just now. Windows, 1920 x 1200 @ 96 dpi, Visual Studio, light-on-dark theme. I like 'em small to fit more on the screen and at 8px this font looks janky. It is blurry with uneven thickness and requires an eye strain to read. It doesn't seem to be hinted at all even though it is a TTF version. Here's Berkley Mono on the left and Mensc…

so am i right to assume the font does not have embedded bitmap for small pixel sizes? That would be a bummer.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#52

Post by cosmotic »

amake wrote: post #26

To all the people complaining about how they don't like ligatures: Nobody cares. If you don't like them, then don't use them. They are optional. Lots of people like them. Let people like things.

Ligatures make code harder to read and harder to edit. It's not just personal preference, it's the science of usability. When I press backspace or cursor keys, I expect one glyph to be erased, not who-knows-how-many (half?!).

Authors of content and programs with ligatures-by-default subject their readers and users to the penalty of ligatures.

Some people like pain, but that doesn't mean we need pain switches on everything with pain set to on by default.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#53

Post by signa11 »

layer8 wrote: post #48
kitsunesoba wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons why I'm hoping to sometime this year upgrade my main monitor to something with high pixel density that is practical to run with integer scaling: super crisp text with any size and font. Text doesn't look terrible on my current 27" 2560x1440 monitor with a font that's designed for it, but it's a far cry from the same text on my MBP screen.

I’m waiting for a 27" 4K monitor with better-than-IPS contrast (i.e. VA or OLED) to use at 200% DPI, to replace a 1920x1200. With WQHD (2560x1440) I have the problem that 1-pixel stems are too thin for my eyes, 2-pixel stems are too big (font gets too large relative to screen size), and everything in between is blurry.

if you have not considered it before, check eizo (https://www.eizo.com/home/) out. they make truly excellent displays.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#55

Post by jhanschoo »

cosmotic wrote: post #52
amake wrote: post #26

To all the people complaining about how they don't like ligatures: Nobody cares. If you don't like them, then don't use them. They are optional. Lots of people like them. Let people like things.

Ligatures make code harder to read and harder to edit. It's not just personal preference, it's the science of usability. When I press backspace or cursor keys, I expect one glyph to be erased, not who-knows-how-many (half?!). Authors of content and programs with ligatures-by-default subject their readers and users to the penalty of ligatures. Some people like pain, but that doesn't mean we need pain switches on every…

> When I press backspace or cursor keys, I expect one glyph to be erased, not who-knows-how-many.

That's you, and not very generalizable. Many people edit on sites with ligatures and many people edit non-Latin text where isolated, non-ligatured text is wrong (Arabic, some Indic scripts, Han characters, Japanese katakana).

Me personally, with respect to code, I pretty much think in terms of tokens: to remove the `==`, I backspace twice, rather than that to remove the `==`, I remove `=` and then the other `=`, and each requires one backspace.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#56

Post by amake »

cosmotic wrote: post #52
amake wrote: post #26

To all the people complaining about how they don't like ligatures: Nobody cares. If you don't like them, then don't use them. They are optional. Lots of people like them. Let people like things.

Ligatures make code harder to read and harder to edit. It's not just personal preference, it's the science of usability. When I press backspace or cursor keys, I expect one glyph to be erased, not who-knows-how-many (half?!). Authors of content and programs with ligatures-by-default subject their readers and users to the penalty of ligatures. Some people like pain, but that doesn't mean we need pain switches on every…

> It's not just personal preference, it's the science of usability

It's obviously personal preference, because many people prefer it. If I found ligatures harder to read or edit then I wouldn't use them, but I don't, so I do.

> programs with ligatures-by-default

Such as?

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#57

Post by LudwigNagasena »

cosmotic wrote: post #52
amake wrote: post #26

To all the people complaining about how they don't like ligatures: Nobody cares. If you don't like them, then don't use them. They are optional. Lots of people like them. Let people like things.

Ligatures make code harder to read and harder to edit. It's not just personal preference, it's the science of usability. When I press backspace or cursor keys, I expect one glyph to be erased, not who-knows-how-many (half?!). Authors of content and programs with ligatures-by-default subject their readers and users to the penalty of ligatures. Some people like pain, but that doesn't mean we need pain switches on every…

Ligatures make code easier to read because they map 1-to-1 to tokens. Ideally, the font would also be proportional; and the IDE would support elastic tabstops... But the tech isn't there yet.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#58

Post by eddyg »

swah wrote: post #9
vinkelhake wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a very similar experience with Pragmata Pro. I kept coming back to the page and eventually just forked out the money for it. I adore that font and I've been using it for going on 8 years. This is not a this font vs. that font comment - it's about spending money on a font and how a lot of people find that a weird thing. For me, I came to the realization that it's a thing I literally spend hours every day looking…

Me too - then Iosevka came along...

Does Iosevka have hand-designed bitmaps for a bunch of common font sizes so text looks great even on low-DPI displays?

https://fsd.it/wp-content/uploads/PragmataPro_bitmaps.gif

To me, this is one of the best parts of Pragmata Pro (which I also eventually bought and has been my daily driver for years, although I do use Berkeley Mono for presentations and screenshots...)

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#59

Post by LudwigNagasena »

wprl wrote: post #36
whalesalad wrote: post #17

If you want excellent ligature support I would recommend Fira Mono. There are powerline variants, too. Lately I have been in love with IBM Plex Mono, but no ligature support.

You can add the Fira ligatures to any font with Ligaturizer. Personally I use it with CMU Typewriter. [1]: https://github.com/ToxicFrog/Ligaturizer

I remember that I tried to use it to add ligatures to Fira Sans and it didn't work well.

Re: Berkeley Mono Ligatures Release

#60

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nbk_2000 wrote: post #30
KronisLV wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I've stuck with free fonts most of the time. For programming, currently I tend to use: Liberation Mono: from the very same package of fonts that are included in LibreOffice, I find it to be surprisingly readable and easy on the eyes for most kinds of code or monospaced text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts PT Mono: while initially I really liked PT Sans and PT Serif separately (they're curre…

Same here, I try out a lot of monospace fonts as they come along. But Liberation Mono just scratches all my itches so well. I do however enjoy setting comments using fonts that aren't monospaced (which I begrudgingly acknowledge Comic Sans is actually decent for). At some point though the old typographers adage of "people read best, what they read most" must impact our preferences.

Ive been using proportional fonts for coding for more than a decade now, and I can’t go back to mono space. I just wish there was a proportional programming font with ligatures, but I’m ok doing without if it means going monospace.
Post reply on HN