On: Monospaced Programming Fonts with Ligatures

[Jakob]

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.

[NoahTheDuke → Jakob]

My problem with Iosevka (and Input and others like them) is that the [x-height][0] is too large, ie the bottom-half parts are too tall compared to the top-half and uppercase letters. Especially in less-wide weights, it feels muddy and hard to distinguish.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-height

[Jakob → NoahTheDuke]

That is exactly the kind of problem this font wants to solve. Just change the x-height to your taste: https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/blob/master/parameters.t...

[mrkgnao → NoahTheDuke]

You can probably tweak a couple numbers in parameters.toml or something. I made my own weight in between normal and medium, for example.

[vertebrate → NoahTheDuke]

curious what fonts do you use and find acceptable?

[msarnoff → Jakob]

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!

[gnuvince → Jakob]

I love Iosevka Term! My only issue with it is that there seems to be a problem in Emacs 25 that makes the screen flicker once in a while when I use it. For Emacs, I like to use Fantasque Sans Mono, another amazing font.

[Barrin92 → gnuvince]

I have this exact same problem! Never connected it to the font. I was tearing my hear out

[mrkgnao → gnuvince]

You mean the screen flicker is from ... Iosevka? :(

[mVChr → Jakob]

I've rifled through many a programming font, bought Pragmata Pro at one point (as you can see I also like taller fonts), tried many others over the years (Monoid was my previous favorite ligatured font). Iosevka is my current favorite. My customization args are part of my dotfiles repo so I can install it exactly how I like on any new system without effort.

[FireBeyond → mVChr]

Out of curiosity, what are your customization args for Iosevka?

I do like it a lot, but find myself going back and forth between it, Fira Code, Pragmata Pro and Operator Mono.

[weeksie → Jakob]

Ooh, that reminds me of Profont (which I used until displays got high enough rez that a pixel font at 9px was just unreadable).

[mikekchar → Jakob]

There is even a Chinese/Japanese version: https://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/inziu.html Thank you! I've been looking for something like this for ages.

[pfooti → Jakob]

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

[bau5 → Jakob]

I like the variation on "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog".

[thanatropism → Jakob]

Years? I don't even spend the whole day coding, and still switch fonts every month or so.

Exception: all my spreadsheets are in Consolas (an universally available font in Windows environments).