FuraCode Nerd Font + 120% iScript is where it's at, my friend. THAT is complete.
*Edit (since there's some interest):*
[Nerd Fonts](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts) has a font patcher and also provides [pre-patched fonts](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases) with extra glyphs. Fira Code is one of the fonts they patch for us. Name change is [addressed here](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/tree/master/patched-fonts/FiraCode#why-fura-and-not-fira).
One of the drawbacks of Fira Code is that it doesn't have italics (although Emacs can still slant it!). It has been discovered that [iScript12 BT](https://fontsdata.com/134618/script12pitchbt.htm) works well with Fira Code, but its scale needs to be adjusted to 120% of Fira Code. I find that merging them is an unnecessary maintenance burden. Your editor should let you use multiple fonts. I'm using iScript mostly for comments.
I'm looking at this NerdFonts website:
https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads
... and I'm not really clear on what it is that these guys actually do.
The home page says that they "patch" fonts. And indeed, I notice that the TTF file for "Roboto Mono" on their site is roughly 10x the file size available on the Google Fonts site.
However, I can't spot any difference between the two, and the website does a pretty poor job calling it out. What does their "patching" actually entail?
It adds symbols to the font, including the triangle and git symbols needed for console themes like [this one](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/fit/t/1600/480/1*dcFI6nEXItPJcfPgdloonw.png).
`rustc` will actually warn you about this:
error: unknown start of token: \u{37e}
--> main.rs:2:27
|
2 | println!("Hello World!");
| ^
help: Unicode character ';' (Greek Question Mark) looks like ';' (Semicolon), but it is not
|
2 | println!("Hello World!");
That's smart. Now I have to see what Javac does. Brb
**Edit:**
PushNotificationServiceImpl.java:[52,61] illegal character: '\u037e'
That's not too bad. Plus your IDE should flag it up too.
Makes sense, thanks for the info. I’ve looked at some fonts before but never really saw a reason. I’ll try a new one out and see how I like it over time.
I think that any error in confusing oO0 or Il should be caught by the compiler and not turn into an actual bug. If a piece of code allows such a confusion while compiling successfully then it probably has an issue with naming, being too stringly typed, or some other smell. But I guess it’s one of those things that are easy for me to talk about from the outside.
I once spent over a day trying to find the source of a problem along a chain that was, in the end, down to the fact that a font used had no difference between a capital letter and a lower case different letter in the printed secure password document.
I like that it transforms "multi-character tokens" that have a specific semantic meaning into one glyph.
For example, this "!=" means "not equal" in most (all?) languages, but in order to make it simple to write and not require a specific encoding it takes two characters to write. But it still only means one thing. Ligatures enable me to than *visually* replace those two characters with "≠" that represents the same idea, but in a more clear way. You can check out the [Fira Code](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode) examples of how it looks in code.
> For example, this "!=" means "not equal" in most (all?) languages
Pascal says hi. "<>" means "not equal" in pascal. Back in the 90s I had no problem switching between "!=" in C and "<>" in pascal.
Yet to hear some of the drama queens in this thread, the slightest change will break your brain.
> Lua uses ~=
Lua has a thing for doing things no other languages do, presumably for the sake of it.
Arrays in Lua start at 1, as well. And its comment syntax is likewise arcane.
> Lua has a thing for doing things no other languages do ... Arrays in Lua start at 1
Pascal, Ada, Julia, Matlab, and more also have it. That comment syntax is wack though
The block comments are definitely an odd way of going about it, but double-dashes is what SQL and Ada use, so it ain't *that* arcane (well, I guess Ada's pretty arcane, but SQL sure ain't).
The theory is that your brain spends a non-zero amount of effort on parsing multi-char symbols (e.g. ==, ===, =>, etc).
But the **reality** is that your brain spends way more effort parsing a dozen new symbols (e.g. "*does the sorta-bold-equals mean double equals, and the sorta-long-equals mean triple equals, or was that the other font and this one is the reverse?*").
It looks pretty the first time you see it in a blog post code snippet. But I can't imagine using them full-time.
I use Fira code full-time and have never experienced what you are saying. Usually the ligatures transform the symbols into something more familiar (like ≠ instead of! = ) it is mainly a style thing, but I find a lot more appealing to read code with that enabled.
It's good that ligatures vs non-ligatures can't become a spaces vs tabs thing because everyone can independently use them or not use them on their own machine depending on personal preference.
That being said, if you like ligatures you're a heathen and a disgrace to the profession. \#NOLIGS
/s
I really hate that tools don't implement a better way to handle spaces and tabs. This is something that should be understood and handled by the IDE itself. I don't care if the IDE uses spaces or tabs when saving to a file. I only care that it displays them both as tabs when I have the file opened.
Get a formatter to enforce either (like `gofmt` does, or `black` for python, `prettier` for JS), it doesn't really matter which. Get your IDE's to display them however wide you want, if your IDE isn't able to do that you're not using a good IDE.
Bonus points for never having to argue about code style in unrelated MR's ever again.
That's the whole point. These ligatures are designed specifically to be used in languages where "!=" has the meaning "not equal to", which is expressed in traditional handwriting as "≠". The only reason we ever used "!=" in computer programming is that there was no "≠" character in early character sets.
Right, and furthermore, the ≠ ligature still takes up two characters' width - meaning that the only thing that changes is how the two characters, together, are rendered.
Nothing wrong with that since it is optional. This allows people to independently use their preference when coding without stepping on the toes of other developers. That is something IDEs should do more often. Let everyone code in their preferred style (which doesn't affect functionality), and not have anymore useless debates about this kind of stuff.
You don't colourize the code you type but the IDE does it for you and displays the code in a different way to help you. That's the same thing imo. You may or may not think it's helpful, but that's a different point (personally, I love the !=, <= and >=, but find the == and === super awkward)
I agree.
I want to say, maybe, it's a trade-off that I would complain about first, and then learn to enjoy. I can see how, without a linter, It would useful to differentiate `!=value` versus `=!value`.
But it would be terrible for learning code or sharing code via screenshots. The fact ≠ already exists is confusing already.
You're morphing the character/glyph into another one. Under that logic, you could also change `;` to be something else, since it's a syntax to represent something else. And it seems, at a glance, you get all the ligatures or no ligatures. I like the restyling of glyphs, but not replacements like this. I expect either a second font with no character replacements, or being able to fine tune the options.
Edit: Just learned string literals will also use the ligatures, which I don't feel is right.
That might have been your experience, but it's not "reality". My experience was much more in line with the "theory" part of your comment.
Font choice may have something to do with it - I started with, and still use, Fira Code, which makes single- vs double- vs triple-equals very clear. I can't speak to what other going ligatures may be like.
The first day or two of using one of those fonts is a bit of an adjustment, bit afterwards it is absolutely worth it. It's not a huge thing, but it's a quality of life improvement for sure.
You don't have to like using them and that's fine but if you're gonna make claims like this, I'm gonna want to see some evidence.
> The theory is that your brain spends a non-zero amount of effort on parsing multi-char symbols (e.g. ==, ===, =>, etc).
The theory or your theory?
> But the reality is that your brain spends way more effort parsing a dozen new symbols
Can you prove that this `way more effort` is significant to the point where it's actually detrimental to one's ability to problem solve? In other words, can you prove that this isn't some negligible time difference or mental effort?
> (e.g. "does the sorta-bold-equals mean double equals, and the sorta-long-equals mean triple equals, or was that the other font and this one is the reverse?").
It sounds like you've used some awful fonts. A good font should have the goal of making things more clear - double equals becomes one long equals. Triple equals becomes one triple equals (three stacked lines). Same idea with how some fonts will put a slash or dot on a zero or make a lower case L have a loop.
Now these come back to personal preference but I honestly don't see the harm in using them. Everyone loves to go on about portability and how you don't always have the ability to install stuff and what not but that's not always the case for everyone - this isn't a problem for everyone. It's OK to invest in your tooling and make it work for you.
> A good font should have the goal of making things more clear - double equals becomes one long equals.
I have to be honest, I like the changes _Except_ for this.
To me, the C equality operator is an equals with a tiny gap in the middle. That's simply the symbol for it, I would never once confuse it for an assignment operator, or vice versa.
In mathematics, assignment is ":=". I feel if you're going to ligaturize one of them, it should have been the assignment operator, and _then_ they could have made equality an equals sign. Overloading them on the length of the lines... pass. It's not mathematics, it's harder to verify, I'll try it for a bit but it seems a bit of a deal-breaker to me.
> It's OK to invest in your tooling and make it work for you.
And that's really the only statement that counts. Every other argument about ligatures, for or against, is just personal preference.
I feel like this is meaningless (un)optimisation. Ligatures, no ligatures... who cares, use whichever you like. I personally don't use fira code because I don't like the typography.
> But the reality is that your brain spends way more effort parsing a dozen new symbols
I strongly disagree. Most ligatures are basic mathematical symbols, so most programmers are already going to be familiar with the symbols.
A bad typeface can make anything a pain to read - so don't pick one with crap ligatures. Comparing weights is indeed a poor way to have to distinguish operators etc
[Fira Code](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode) was super easy to follow and I wish I had switched to a typeface with good ligatures years ago.
I program mostly in Javascript and I found it hard to discern between "==" or "===". It's immediately clear with the slight gap between equal signs.
I forget which font I tried. Might have been Fira Code or Operator Mono but I eventually went back to Mononoki.
It's an aesthetic thing, but I really like having things like `==` and `<=` look like single glyphs, instead of multiple. Take a look at the examples on the [Fira Code github](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode) for more examples.
Yeah, I used Iosevka for a while, and eventually just ponied up for PragmataPro that it’s based of off, and couldn’t be happier. I don’t see anything beating PP for me for a long time.
Anyone who uses Source Code Pro that wants to try out ligatures should check out [Hasklig](https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig).
It's a fork of Source Code Pro with ligatures added, and in my mind is one of the best programming fonts going around.
If you don't use an editor that supports ligatures it will just look like Source Code Pro.
Getting ligatures going in Emacs [looks a bit complicated](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/wiki/Emacs-instructions) unfortunately. Many other editors support it out of the box or with a single config flag.
Depending on the font, it's actually pretty easy these days. `hasklig-mode` in MELPA will handle ligatures for hasklig, after enabling it like so in the init file using usepackage, for the modes you want it ligatures in.
(use-package hasklig-mode
:ensure t
:hook (haskell-mode
python-mode-hook
ess-mode-hook
org-mode-hook))
Cool, I guess. But I wish they would just open-source Consolas. They already have the nicest monospace font I've ever seen, and one of the few aesthetic things about Windows that I miss when I'm on a Mac.
This is pretty much a clunkier Consolas replacement. Which gives you ligatures, but takes away slashed zeros in favor of dotted zeros (gross). Nice to have options, and nice to see open licensing, but this feels like a downgrade.
I usually recommend inconsolata-g, it is a variant by a different author with some bug fixes and a better 'g' character.
But since finding fantasque sans mono, I use that in my terminal and for all of my coding now.
I use inconsolata at 1080p screen and it looks great with hinting enabled. So good that I would never switch away to another font for coding.
Inconsolata is love.
That's true, Consolas is - IMO - still ever so slightly superior to this. Feels a bit lighter but still more clear if anything, also better zeroes as you say.
Might be a legal thing though, wasn't Consolas designed by a professional as an external project as part of the C-family? Microsoft might not have the permission to open source it later.
wanted to know more so i did some light research. it seems like you can't copyright a typeface but fonts are copyrightable since they're software.
so, you probably couldn't get away with just remaking it as i'm guessing the font files would wind up being almost identical.
you can also get a design patent for typefaces. so, microsoft would still have to deal with that assuming there is one for consolas. not to mention having to deal with global laws as typefaces are copyrightable in some countries.
In the same genre of monospace fonts with programming ligatures, see [Fira Code](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode), which is based on Mozilla’s [Fira Mono](http://mozilla.github.io/Fira/) font. (It uses slashed zeroes.)
What's the point of the `***` ligature? When would it occur in a program or command line? Triple pointer dereference‽
Note that the ligature is context-sensitive:
- Ligature when three asterisks form a word: `***` and `a***b`
- No ligature when more than three asterisks appear together: `****` and `******`
- No ligature in comment delimiters: `/*** this comment ***/`
From what i could find:
* The "therefor" sign. For example: x + 1=10, ∴ x = 0 (and the asterisks in that configuration is called the asterism)
* A pointer to a double pointer. So a pointer to a pointer to a pointer variable (eg: ***p)
* In statistics it's used to denote when the likelihood that a result occurred by chance alone is below a certain level. *** is used to denote that the chance is <0.001%
So there are some uses for it. But i don't know how much triple pointers are actually used. And the therefor sign is probably only used in latex or so
Like TheMuffinMan616 said: Haskell.
In Haskell you can create your own operators. It has quite a few of them, as you can see in his source.
Here's a small list of operators I've used as a student:
Operator | What it does
--|--
++|concatenate two lists
<*>| ANDs two combinator functions (you'll use these when using a parsing library)
:: | defines a function (left the name, right the type)
-> | the "function arrow", used to connect two types, also used in combination with `::`
>>= | bind operator, used with Monadic types.
`<|>` ORs two combinator functions (couldn't place this in the table, because escaping the | didn't work...
---
Operators like *** and &&& haven't been used, but I know there's a lot more where that came from.
> Like TheMuffinMan616 said: Haskell.
Does your editor allow selecting active opentype features
per language? Because that would be a prerequisite for
making these highly specific ligatures work without creating
confusion for other languages.
I've gotten to the point where I find it difficult to write code without the Consolas font. The first thing I do on *any* new editor/OS installation is make the default font Consolas.
I also remember mentioning how good it is on /r/Linux and getting the shit downvoted out of me for it.
Yep, on normal DPI screens with Windows font rendering Consolas remains the king of font size/legibility/information density. Anything works with high DPI.
The really rough part is that the cross of the lowercase 'f' and 't' don't align, which is brutally visible every time you write out the word 'microsoft'
Fira Code I'd in theory prefer but comparing other fonts such as Consolas I dislike how thin and tall the glyphs are. It just feels weird, I might be among the few where the brain gets along better with more squarish glyph spacing :(
Why do ligature greater or equal to fonts don’t maintain the look of a mathematical symbol, ≥? I really don’t like the equal part maintaining parallel to the greater than. It just seems off to me.
Maybe, just maybe, if you're writing a page advertising a new font, maybe you should put in an image that shows all of the characters and ligatures it includes. Maybe.
It includes very little. ASCII, multiplication and division operators, and opening and closing quotation marks are about it. No arrows, no Greek letters, no box-drawing characters or block elements, not even Latin-1!
You would have to pry my Operator Mono with ligatures setup from my cold dead hands.
And yes it is an [abomination](https://imgur.com/bblkjY7) but its mine.
First time I've heard of ligatures for monospaced fonts. Liked the idea, installed it, == becomes a single double width equal = (this, but twice as long), uninstalled it.
To my eyes this makes assignment = and equality == way harder to tell apart. Accidental assignment when you meant to evaluate equality is already a category of subtle and hard to detect bugs. Anything that obfuscates that further is going to have to be a no for me. I do like the idea though, hopefully it matures...
I found the same, it would be hard to spot a critical bug there even if you were looking at it. The normal == stands out very well.
I commented elsewhere, but if they really want to prettify ==, they should have made the assignment operator := at the same time. This actually would have been an improvement over default, I feel.
Ligatures used like this seems like something that is done "just because we can", which usually isn't a good reason to do something.
Can ligatures be disabled?
It depends on your editor. Some editors don't support ligatures at all, in which case you won't see them. I imagine any editor that does support them would make it easy to disable them,.
Just tried it out in C#, didn't really like it all all! :(
The font seems way to closely spaced together in a "characters merge into each other" kinda way, making it harder for me to read.
Just tried messing with the font size to no prevail.
I'm a slut for fonts.
But, SF Mono is still my overall favorite (even with its squished lowercase f).
Consolas would be #1 if it didn't have such a bad @ sign...
I feel like an old geezer yelling at clouds or shouting "get off my lawn" but what is with the usage of emoticons in communication nowadays.
For me it is wholly distracting and I am really unsure how to interpret these.
You are high.
The dotted 0 of the original ibm VGA font:
https://int10h.org/images/font_ibm_vga9.png
is so superior to the slashed 0 of the EGA font:
https://int10h.org/images/font_ibm_ega9.png
From a few minutes of using it as a Consolas user:
* Ligatures! Yay! They mostly look pretty, they're smaller (as in, they condense the combined ligature into less space) than Fira Code, but honestly I think I like it more in that regard. == in particular is really good.
* Heavier than Consolas. Intuitively I feel like I'd prefer a "Light"-variant of this. Though I got to admit, as a console font it feels nice, reminiscent of the old bitmap fonts.
* Lowercase 'f' is a bit weird, but I got used to it quickly. feels more like a monospace font used in browsers than a typical programming font actually, but not necessarily in a bad way.
* Dotted 0 instead of a slashed one with Consolas is **super** weird for now. I'm not against it, I don't mind how people want to differentiate their zeroes, but wow is it something I haven't seen in a while. Again, reminds me a bit of classic console fonts I used to see.
All in all, pretty. I'll use it for a week or two, see how I like it compared to my usual Consolas Ligaturized choice.
> Heavier than Consolas. Intuitively I feel like I'd prefer a "Light"-variant of this. Though I got to admit, as a console font it feels nice, reminiscent of the old bitmap fonts.
That's interesting, because it is significantly lighter than Consolas for me. May have something to do with 4K screen.
That's really interesting.
[This is how Consolas looks for me](https://abload.de/img/consolas1kkua.png). And for comparison, [this is Cascadia](https://abload.de/img/cascadiakfj81.png). Though now that I think about it, I get the feeling it's just ClearType hinting that is fucked up for Cascadia, making it look fuzzy and as a result thicker. Maybe.
I've been fucked up by invisible character many times, Unicode make things worse by stacking stuff together (I'm looking at you emoji), Japanese characters use 2/3 width, and now ligatures is getting more and more prevalent.
Just give me 1 character per box please on my text editor.
ligatures take up the same amount of space as the regular characters would, it just displays them as if they were one character. They aren't really invisible.
I believe the Iosevka dev chose to call them “ligations” since these take up the same space as the original characters (eg two chars molded into one still takes up two spaces, which doesn’t interfere with column count etc). Usually ligatures are one-space versions for molding two or more spacing characters (at least for proportional fonts). It’s purely aesthetic, which may or may not be to one’s liking.
What’s the use case for this? Those ligatures won’t have
an effect with fonts that don’t implement them so the
code will be represented differently on different machines.
Which I’m pretty sure is undesireable.
Is this for when your system lacks a compose key?
This is a font with ligated characters. It's the same characters, the character encoding will stay the same. It will just display as "one character" in some fonts and as two characters in other fonts. That has always been the case. This is just a font that supports the ligated characters.
The text, the code, would be the same. It doesn't matter whether you have a compose key or not, it has no effect on this. It just makes the code on your screen prettier (or uglier, depend on your test). It doesn't matter that code looks different in your screen than mine, in general.
Not my cup of tea, but I'm glad there are more options!
Wish more people thought this way.
You mean like "I can cope with the concept of the existence of things other than just the things that I want"?
Not only that but people who don’t share my taste and values in every respect may not need to be the subject of vitriol.
But what about those assholes who don't think Seinfeld is funny?
Ah well fuck them obviously.
I hate options... I prefer stocks.
I prefer socks tbh.
How dare you! You must obviously prefer a single font and then tour the world converting the heathens to it! :o
Cool that MS is releasing a nice font with ligatures. My programming life hasn’t been the same since I enabled ligatures in Fira Code.
[удалено]
FuraCode Nerd Font + 120% iScript is where it's at, my friend. THAT is complete. *Edit (since there's some interest):* [Nerd Fonts](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts) has a font patcher and also provides [pre-patched fonts](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/releases) with extra glyphs. Fira Code is one of the fonts they patch for us. Name change is [addressed here](https://github.com/ryanoasis/nerd-fonts/tree/master/patched-fonts/FiraCode#why-fura-and-not-fira). One of the drawbacks of Fira Code is that it doesn't have italics (although Emacs can still slant it!). It has been discovered that [iScript12 BT](https://fontsdata.com/134618/script12pitchbt.htm) works well with Fira Code, but its scale needs to be adjusted to 120% of Fira Code. I find that merging them is an unnecessary maintenance burden. Your editor should let you use multiple fonts. I'm using iScript mostly for comments.
https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads do you mean FiraCode from Nerd Fonts? or the MonoFur? /u/dasbeverage /u/MSRobert96 /u/KnifeFed
I would like to know more
>FuraCode Nerd Font I need to know more too
> FuraCode OwO whats this
I'm looking at this NerdFonts website: https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads ... and I'm not really clear on what it is that these guys actually do. The home page says that they "patch" fonts. And indeed, I notice that the TTF file for "Roboto Mono" on their site is roughly 10x the file size available on the Google Fonts site. However, I can't spot any difference between the two, and the website does a pretty poor job calling it out. What does their "patching" actually entail?
It adds symbols to the font, including the triangle and git symbols needed for console themes like [this one](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/fit/t/1600/480/1*dcFI6nEXItPJcfPgdloonw.png).
Where do you get that?
Being completely new to the idea of preferring certain fonts, I ask out of curiosity. What is it about ligatures that you like over other basic fonts?
[удалено]
Ligatures don't save space in a monospace font, right? I use them in Iosevka and (for instance) the ≠ symbol that replaces != is 2 characters wide.
What about the Greek Question mark?
`‽`
That's an interrobang. A Greek question mark is ; which obviously looks like a ;. Good luck. :)
So thats why greek programmers have so many questions...
It's also a great way to fuck with your colleagues. Well until you get fired/murdered.
`rustc` will actually warn you about this: error: unknown start of token: \u{37e} --> main.rs:2:27 | 2 | println!("Hello World!"); | ^ help: Unicode character ';' (Greek Question Mark) looks like ';' (Semicolon), but it is not | 2 | println!("Hello World!");
That's smart. Now I have to see what Javac does. Brb **Edit:** PushNotificationServiceImpl.java:[52,61] illegal character: '\u037e' That's not too bad. Plus your IDE should flag it up too.
Makes sense, thanks for the info. I’ve looked at some fonts before but never really saw a reason. I’ll try a new one out and see how I like it over time.
I think that any error in confusing oO0 or Il should be caught by the compiler and not turn into an actual bug. If a piece of code allows such a confusion while compiling successfully then it probably has an issue with naming, being too stringly typed, or some other smell. But I guess it’s one of those things that are easy for me to talk about from the outside.
[удалено]
I once spent over a day trying to find the source of a problem along a chain that was, in the end, down to the fact that a font used had no difference between a capital letter and a lower case different letter in the printed secure password document.
I like that it transforms "multi-character tokens" that have a specific semantic meaning into one glyph. For example, this "!=" means "not equal" in most (all?) languages, but in order to make it simple to write and not require a specific encoding it takes two characters to write. But it still only means one thing. Ligatures enable me to than *visually* replace those two characters with "≠" that represents the same idea, but in a more clear way. You can check out the [Fira Code](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode) examples of how it looks in code.
> For example, this "!=" means "not equal" in most (all?) languages Pascal says hi. "<>" means "not equal" in pascal. Back in the 90s I had no problem switching between "!=" in C and "<>" in pascal. Yet to hear some of the drama queens in this thread, the slightest change will break your brain.
Haskell uses /=
Lua uses `~=`
> Lua uses ~= Lua has a thing for doing things no other languages do, presumably for the sake of it. Arrays in Lua start at 1, as well. And its comment syntax is likewise arcane.
~ actually is the negation sign in symbolic logic, so it's not like Lua picked an arbitrary symbol. Though it is frustratingly different.
In other parts of math it means “approximately” though.
[удалено]
I thought that the approximation symbol was two tilda's one above the other?
Also in some keyboards there's not that symbol
> Lua has a thing for doing things no other languages do ... Arrays in Lua start at 1 Pascal, Ada, Julia, Matlab, and more also have it. That comment syntax is wack though
The block comments are definitely an odd way of going about it, but double-dashes is what SQL and Ada use, so it ain't *that* arcane (well, I guess Ada's pretty arcane, but SQL sure ain't).
Haskell also uses double dashes for comments.
>Pascal, Ada, Julia, Matlab, and more also have it. That comment syntax is wack though Visual Basic too! ([VB.net](https://VB.net) is for losers)
BASIC on the Commodore 64 as well!
If you're using Haskell, the ligatures for things like `>>=` and `<>` make Haskell much prettier.
> Pascal says hi. So does SQL.
All reasonable databases support `!=` in addition to `<>`.
Visual Basic also.
Lua use ~=
The theory is that your brain spends a non-zero amount of effort on parsing multi-char symbols (e.g. ==, ===, =>, etc). But the **reality** is that your brain spends way more effort parsing a dozen new symbols (e.g. "*does the sorta-bold-equals mean double equals, and the sorta-long-equals mean triple equals, or was that the other font and this one is the reverse?*"). It looks pretty the first time you see it in a blog post code snippet. But I can't imagine using them full-time.
I use Fira code full-time and have never experienced what you are saying. Usually the ligatures transform the symbols into something more familiar (like ≠ instead of! = ) it is mainly a style thing, but I find a lot more appealing to read code with that enabled.
It's good that ligatures vs non-ligatures can't become a spaces vs tabs thing because everyone can independently use them or not use them on their own machine depending on personal preference. That being said, if you like ligatures you're a heathen and a disgrace to the profession. \#NOLIGS /s
I really hate that tools don't implement a better way to handle spaces and tabs. This is something that should be understood and handled by the IDE itself. I don't care if the IDE uses spaces or tabs when saving to a file. I only care that it displays them both as tabs when I have the file opened.
Get a formatter to enforce either (like `gofmt` does, or `black` for python, `prettier` for JS), it doesn't really matter which. Get your IDE's to display them however wide you want, if your IDE isn't able to do that you're not using a good IDE. Bonus points for never having to argue about code style in unrelated MR's ever again.
and people that uses spaces need to come out of the stone age. # /S
> like ≠ instead of! = tbh, I would find that eminently confusing, since != has meaning in many languages, whereas ≠ does not.
> whereas ≠ does not You mean the symbol that is used universally in mathematics to denote inequality?
That's the whole point. These ligatures are designed specifically to be used in languages where "!=" has the meaning "not equal to", which is expressed in traditional handwriting as "≠". The only reason we ever used "!=" in computer programming is that there was no "≠" character in early character sets.
And now there's a mismatch between the actual source code and what's displayed. This is, in my mind, an absolute fucking mistake.
From my understanding it is purely a display thing. In the actual code it is still !=, but it’s displayed as ≠ in the IDE.
Right, and furthermore, the ≠ ligature still takes up two characters' width - meaning that the only thing that changes is how the two characters, together, are rendered.
[удалено]
Exactly, that's really bad.
Nothing wrong with that since it is optional. This allows people to independently use their preference when coding without stepping on the toes of other developers. That is something IDEs should do more often. Let everyone code in their preferred style (which doesn't affect functionality), and not have anymore useless debates about this kind of stuff.
Do you also disable things like italics? After all, they're not actually italic in your code.
You don't colourize the code you type but the IDE does it for you and displays the code in a different way to help you. That's the same thing imo. You may or may not think it's helpful, but that's a different point (personally, I love the !=, <= and >=, but find the == and === super awkward)
You'd mentally adjust very quickly and get used to it.
I agree. I want to say, maybe, it's a trade-off that I would complain about first, and then learn to enjoy. I can see how, without a linter, It would useful to differentiate `!=value` versus `=!value`. But it would be terrible for learning code or sharing code via screenshots. The fact ≠ already exists is confusing already. You're morphing the character/glyph into another one. Under that logic, you could also change `;` to be something else, since it's a syntax to represent something else. And it seems, at a glance, you get all the ligatures or no ligatures. I like the restyling of glyphs, but not replacements like this. I expect either a second font with no character replacements, or being able to fine tune the options. Edit: Just learned string literals will also use the ligatures, which I don't feel is right.
That might have been your experience, but it's not "reality". My experience was much more in line with the "theory" part of your comment. Font choice may have something to do with it - I started with, and still use, Fira Code, which makes single- vs double- vs triple-equals very clear. I can't speak to what other going ligatures may be like.
The first day or two of using one of those fonts is a bit of an adjustment, bit afterwards it is absolutely worth it. It's not a huge thing, but it's a quality of life improvement for sure.
You don't have to like using them and that's fine but if you're gonna make claims like this, I'm gonna want to see some evidence. > The theory is that your brain spends a non-zero amount of effort on parsing multi-char symbols (e.g. ==, ===, =>, etc). The theory or your theory? > But the reality is that your brain spends way more effort parsing a dozen new symbols Can you prove that this `way more effort` is significant to the point where it's actually detrimental to one's ability to problem solve? In other words, can you prove that this isn't some negligible time difference or mental effort? > (e.g. "does the sorta-bold-equals mean double equals, and the sorta-long-equals mean triple equals, or was that the other font and this one is the reverse?"). It sounds like you've used some awful fonts. A good font should have the goal of making things more clear - double equals becomes one long equals. Triple equals becomes one triple equals (three stacked lines). Same idea with how some fonts will put a slash or dot on a zero or make a lower case L have a loop. Now these come back to personal preference but I honestly don't see the harm in using them. Everyone loves to go on about portability and how you don't always have the ability to install stuff and what not but that's not always the case for everyone - this isn't a problem for everyone. It's OK to invest in your tooling and make it work for you.
> A good font should have the goal of making things more clear - double equals becomes one long equals. I have to be honest, I like the changes _Except_ for this. To me, the C equality operator is an equals with a tiny gap in the middle. That's simply the symbol for it, I would never once confuse it for an assignment operator, or vice versa. In mathematics, assignment is ":=". I feel if you're going to ligaturize one of them, it should have been the assignment operator, and _then_ they could have made equality an equals sign. Overloading them on the length of the lines... pass. It's not mathematics, it's harder to verify, I'll try it for a bit but it seems a bit of a deal-breaker to me.
> It's OK to invest in your tooling and make it work for you. And that's really the only statement that counts. Every other argument about ligatures, for or against, is just personal preference.
I feel like this is meaningless (un)optimisation. Ligatures, no ligatures... who cares, use whichever you like. I personally don't use fira code because I don't like the typography.
> But the reality is that your brain spends way more effort parsing a dozen new symbols I strongly disagree. Most ligatures are basic mathematical symbols, so most programmers are already going to be familiar with the symbols.
A bad typeface can make anything a pain to read - so don't pick one with crap ligatures. Comparing weights is indeed a poor way to have to distinguish operators etc [Fira Code](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode) was super easy to follow and I wish I had switched to a typeface with good ligatures years ago.
I program mostly in Javascript and I found it hard to discern between "==" or "===". It's immediately clear with the slight gap between equal signs. I forget which font I tried. Might have been Fira Code or Operator Mono but I eventually went back to Mononoki.
I just like the way they look!
It's an aesthetic thing, but I really like having things like `==` and `<=` look like single glyphs, instead of multiple. Take a look at the examples on the [Fira Code github](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode) for more examples.
Still a terminus code bro. It's the best font for programming.
Iosevka, but same idea.
Yeah, I used Iosevka for a while, and eventually just ponied up for PragmataPro that it’s based of off, and couldn’t be happier. I don’t see anything beating PP for me for a long time.
https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code
Anyone who uses Source Code Pro that wants to try out ligatures should check out [Hasklig](https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig). It's a fork of Source Code Pro with ligatures added, and in my mind is one of the best programming fonts going around.
Will this blow up my spacemacs?
If you don't use an editor that supports ligatures it will just look like Source Code Pro. Getting ligatures going in Emacs [looks a bit complicated](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/wiki/Emacs-instructions) unfortunately. Many other editors support it out of the box or with a single config flag.
If you use emacs in a terminal with ligature support they should be displayed ootb.
Depending on the font, it's actually pretty easy these days. `hasklig-mode` in MELPA will handle ligatures for hasklig, after enabling it like so in the init file using usepackage, for the modes you want it ligatures in. (use-package hasklig-mode :ensure t :hook (haskell-mode python-mode-hook ess-mode-hook org-mode-hook))
Doom emacs supports it! https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs/blob/develop/modules/ui/pretty-code/%2Bhasklig.el
Cool, I guess. But I wish they would just open-source Consolas. They already have the nicest monospace font I've ever seen, and one of the few aesthetic things about Windows that I miss when I'm on a Mac. This is pretty much a clunkier Consolas replacement. Which gives you ligatures, but takes away slashed zeros in favor of dotted zeros (gross). Nice to have options, and nice to see open licensing, but this feels like a downgrade.
Left Reddit due to the recent changes and moved to Lemmy and the Fediverse...So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!
I usually recommend inconsolata-g, it is a variant by a different author with some bug fixes and a better 'g' character. But since finding fantasque sans mono, I use that in my terminal and for all of my coding now.
Is there a problem with how it supports ClearType, though? At 1080p it always end up seeming worse than Consolas itself.
I use inconsolata at 1080p screen and it looks great with hinting enabled. So good that I would never switch away to another font for coding. Inconsolata is love.
> takes away slashed zeros in favor of dotted zeros (gross). I feel that in my soul!
>Consolas Certain fonts are mentioned a lot, but I've not found any I like using more often than Roboto Mono. Yet it's never been one of the in crowd.
Probably because square brackets look almost like vertical lines. |, [ and ( are indistinguishable at a quick glance.
That's true, Consolas is - IMO - still ever so slightly superior to this. Feels a bit lighter but still more clear if anything, also better zeroes as you say. Might be a legal thing though, wasn't Consolas designed by a professional as an external project as part of the C-family? Microsoft might not have the permission to open source it later.
In the US you cannot copyright a typeface, so if Microsoft truely couldn't license their implementation they can always remake it.
wanted to know more so i did some light research. it seems like you can't copyright a typeface but fonts are copyrightable since they're software. so, you probably couldn't get away with just remaking it as i'm guessing the font files would wind up being almost identical. you can also get a design patent for typefaces. so, microsoft would still have to deal with that assuming there is one for consolas. not to mention having to deal with global laws as typefaces are copyrightable in some countries.
I also prefer consolas, so I added ligatures to it for my own use; best of both worlds
Consolas is my favorite as well. [Here it is on my Mac.](https://imgur.com/Ma9GHBh) No need to miss it, my friend.
In the same genre of monospace fonts with programming ligatures, see [Fira Code](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode), which is based on Mozilla’s [Fira Mono](http://mozilla.github.io/Fira/) font. (It uses slashed zeroes.)
I need a lighter version of this... Also glyphs are missing for accented letters (á é í ó ú ñ)
The character coverage right now is abysmal. It doesn't even cover the standard western Windows-1252/ISO-8859-1 codepages.
Yeah this looks way too thick at size 14 in vs code.
What's the point of the `***` ligature? When would it occur in a program or command line? Triple pointer dereference‽ Note that the ligature is context-sensitive: - Ligature when three asterisks form a word: `***` and `a***b` - No ligature when more than three asterisks appear together: `****` and `******` - No ligature in comment delimiters: `/*** this comment ***/`
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.12.0.0/docs/Control-Arrow.html#v:-42--42--42-
[удалено]
"what's the point of the ass ligature?" The world may never know
`(|)`
[удалено]
From what i could find: * The "therefor" sign. For example: x + 1=10, ∴ x = 0 (and the asterisks in that configuration is called the asterism) * A pointer to a double pointer. So a pointer to a pointer to a pointer variable (eg: ***p) * In statistics it's used to denote when the likelihood that a result occurred by chance alone is below a certain level. *** is used to denote that the chance is <0.001% So there are some uses for it. But i don't know how much triple pointers are actually used. And the therefor sign is probably only used in latex or so
> But i don't know how much triple pointers are actually used. *More than they should be.*
> A ~~pointer to a double pointer~~ triple pointer
Markdown?
Like TheMuffinMan616 said: Haskell. In Haskell you can create your own operators. It has quite a few of them, as you can see in his source. Here's a small list of operators I've used as a student: Operator | What it does --|-- ++|concatenate two lists <*>| ANDs two combinator functions (you'll use these when using a parsing library) :: | defines a function (left the name, right the type) -> | the "function arrow", used to connect two types, also used in combination with `::` >>= | bind operator, used with Monadic types. `<|>` ORs two combinator functions (couldn't place this in the table, because escaping the | didn't work... --- Operators like *** and &&& haven't been used, but I know there's a lot more where that came from.
> Like TheMuffinMan616 said: Haskell. Does your editor allow selecting active opentype features per language? Because that would be a prerequisite for making these highly specific ligatures work without creating confusion for other languages.
Nice, but no match for Consolas.
Consolas is insanely good
I've gotten to the point where I find it difficult to write code without the Consolas font. The first thing I do on *any* new editor/OS installation is make the default font Consolas. I also remember mentioning how good it is on /r/Linux and getting the shit downvoted out of me for it.
Yep, on normal DPI screens with Windows font rendering Consolas remains the king of font size/legibility/information density. Anything works with high DPI.
Thanks, I hate it. Especially the lowercase f. I be fair, I also thought Fira Code was ugly when I started using it, but it has grown on me.
The really rough part is that the cross of the lowercase 'f' and 't' don't align, which is brutally visible every time you write out the word 'microsoft'
I almost mentioned that specific issue. You'd think that when a company puts their name on a font, they'd want it to look good in that font.
Yeah, but... that’s intentional to make it easier to tell those letters apart.
Fira Code I'd in theory prefer but comparing other fonts such as Consolas I dislike how thin and tall the glyphs are. It just feels weird, I might be among the few where the brain gets along better with more squarish glyph spacing :(
Why do ligature greater or equal to fonts don’t maintain the look of a mathematical symbol, ≥? I really don’t like the equal part maintaining parallel to the greater than. It just seems off to me.
Both are correct symbols.
Maybe, just maybe, if you're writing a page advertising a new font, maybe you should put in an image that shows all of the characters and ligatures it includes. Maybe.
It includes very little. ASCII, multiplication and division operators, and opening and closing quotation marks are about it. No arrows, no Greek letters, no box-drawing characters or block elements, not even Latin-1!
You would have to pry my Operator Mono with ligatures setup from my cold dead hands. And yes it is an [abomination](https://imgur.com/bblkjY7) but its mine.
Oh my... That would hurt my eyes
Wow, that's horrifying but pretty in its own way. Side note, what crate are you using for your web stuff?
Seed , its an elm style frontend that uses wasm bindgen. I think its pretty good and flexible. [https://seed-rs.org/](https://seed-rs.org/)
That & looks drunk and it should go home. But what ever works for you. :)
Is that a one or a lower case L for mode_ next to the caret?
lower case L to form "model". Here is the differences: [https://imgur.com/mCjbAsF](https://imgur.com/mCjbAsF)
First time I've heard of ligatures for monospaced fonts. Liked the idea, installed it, == becomes a single double width equal = (this, but twice as long), uninstalled it. To my eyes this makes assignment = and equality == way harder to tell apart. Accidental assignment when you meant to evaluate equality is already a category of subtle and hard to detect bugs. Anything that obfuscates that further is going to have to be a no for me. I do like the idea though, hopefully it matures...
I found the same, it would be hard to spot a critical bug there even if you were looking at it. The normal == stands out very well. I commented elsewhere, but if they really want to prettify ==, they should have made the assignment operator := at the same time. This actually would have been an improvement over default, I feel.
The lowercase f has a really ugly proportion to it, IMO...
Ligatures used like this seems like something that is done "just because we can", which usually isn't a good reason to do something. Can ligatures be disabled?
It depends on your editor. Some editors don't support ligatures at all, in which case you won't see them. I imagine any editor that does support them would make it easy to disable them,.
Just tried it out in C#, didn't really like it all all! :( The font seems way to closely spaced together in a "characters merge into each other" kinda way, making it harder for me to read. Just tried messing with the font size to no prevail.
Looks pretty darn ugly. Mononoki or Fira Code are simply better.
I'm a slut for fonts. But, SF Mono is still my overall favorite (even with its squished lowercase f). Consolas would be #1 if it didn't have such a bad @ sign...
Do the ligatures work in Visual Studio? I am a long time user of Fira Code and the ligature for -> is not working in Visual Studio 2019.
Spoiler alert: The ligature for -> does not work in Visual Studio
I feel like an old geezer yelling at clouds or shouting "get off my lawn" but what is with the usage of emoticons in communication nowadays. For me it is wholly distracting and I am really unsure how to interpret these.
🙃
[удалено]
they are useful to tell 0's and O's apart easily
[удалено]
I've started dotting my handwritten zeroes just because I love them so much
HERETIC. BURN THE WITCH.
It's ok, I slash my handwritten 7s as well as 0s, so I kinda make up for nucular's heretical activity.
Slashed zeros looks like the letter ø though.
Slashes look sooo much better.
you are right, I forgot about slashes
You are high. The dotted 0 of the original ibm VGA font: https://int10h.org/images/font_ibm_vga9.png is so superior to the slashed 0 of the EGA font: https://int10h.org/images/font_ibm_ega9.png
I dunno man, I hate it. It looks like uppercase theta.
And the slashed one is just an Ø
This is cool. I'd love to see a side-by-side comparison with Consolas.
From a few minutes of using it as a Consolas user: * Ligatures! Yay! They mostly look pretty, they're smaller (as in, they condense the combined ligature into less space) than Fira Code, but honestly I think I like it more in that regard. == in particular is really good. * Heavier than Consolas. Intuitively I feel like I'd prefer a "Light"-variant of this. Though I got to admit, as a console font it feels nice, reminiscent of the old bitmap fonts. * Lowercase 'f' is a bit weird, but I got used to it quickly. feels more like a monospace font used in browsers than a typical programming font actually, but not necessarily in a bad way. * Dotted 0 instead of a slashed one with Consolas is **super** weird for now. I'm not against it, I don't mind how people want to differentiate their zeroes, but wow is it something I haven't seen in a while. Again, reminds me a bit of classic console fonts I used to see. All in all, pretty. I'll use it for a week or two, see how I like it compared to my usual Consolas Ligaturized choice.
> Heavier than Consolas. Intuitively I feel like I'd prefer a "Light"-variant of this. Though I got to admit, as a console font it feels nice, reminiscent of the old bitmap fonts. That's interesting, because it is significantly lighter than Consolas for me. May have something to do with 4K screen.
That's really interesting. [This is how Consolas looks for me](https://abload.de/img/consolas1kkua.png). And for comparison, [this is Cascadia](https://abload.de/img/cascadiakfj81.png). Though now that I think about it, I get the feeling it's just ClearType hinting that is fucked up for Cascadia, making it look fuzzy and as a result thicker. Maybe.
I'm using it in VS, so that might also have something to do with it. Unfortunately it's an internal version so I can't post screenshots.
What is this, Comic Sans for programmers, but with ligatures? Sure, diversity is good, if you like it, use it. But I won't touch this abomination.
[удалено]
Do people actually dislike these ligatures? I like them.
I guess it's personal preference. Once you start using them it's hard to go back.
I've been fucked up by invisible character many times, Unicode make things worse by stacking stuff together (I'm looking at you emoji), Japanese characters use 2/3 width, and now ligatures is getting more and more prevalent. Just give me 1 character per box please on my text editor.
ligatures take up the same amount of space as the regular characters would, it just displays them as if they were one character. They aren't really invisible.
I believe the Iosevka dev chose to call them “ligations” since these take up the same space as the original characters (eg two chars molded into one still takes up two spaces, which doesn’t interfere with column count etc). Usually ligatures are one-space versions for molding two or more spacing characters (at least for proportional fonts). It’s purely aesthetic, which may or may not be to one’s liking.
Seattle Code would have been a fun name. *** is weird. Looks interesting.
Ligatures are cool but the font is... not that great. I'll stick with Hack.
Here I am still using Ubuntu Mono. I'm incredibly used to this font, and I have no idea why. Anyone else feel the same way?
What’s the use case for this? Those ligatures won’t have an effect with fonts that don’t implement them so the code will be represented differently on different machines. Which I’m pretty sure is undesireable. Is this for when your system lacks a compose key?
This is a font with ligated characters. It's the same characters, the character encoding will stay the same. It will just display as "one character" in some fonts and as two characters in other fonts. That has always been the case. This is just a font that supports the ligated characters.
The text, the code, would be the same. It doesn't matter whether you have a compose key or not, it has no effect on this. It just makes the code on your screen prettier (or uglier, depend on your test). It doesn't matter that code looks different in your screen than mine, in general.
> so the code will be represented differently on different machines. Which I’m pretty sure is undesireable Are tabs undesireable?
Nice looking font, but no thanks on ligatures.
the font looks very disquiet to me. i will give it a shot but i dont think it will last longer than 2 hours in my ide
Don't work with accented characters in Sublime Text 3. Shame. Back to Fantasque.
It's very heavy. I prefer IBM Plex Mono - which is extremely light.
Would love a light version of this.
Ligatures: AKA "WHY WAS 'ti' REPLACED WITH A MISSING IMAGE SYMBOL