Test-Driving a $200 Coding Font: Operator Mono | Hacker News Reader

Test-Driving a $200 Coding Font: Operator Mono

kennethreitz.org

50 pointskenneth_reitz48 comments

In case anyone else was looking to vet the entire character set[1].

{I, l, 1}, {Q, O, 0}, {S, 5}, {Z, 2}...if I have to pause even for a second to find confidence, it won't be in editor. Old school MIL-STD-100 and its modern ASME Y14 equivalent were spot on when they expressly prohibited the use of some of these characters as designators in technical drawings.

>> ...using this (beautiful) script typeface for code comments has improved both the quality of tone and frequency of my code annotations — something which I highly value.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it noticeably difficult to parse the italics...suspecting it may have something to do with discontinuity between script characters.

Anyone have an idea who the target market is based on their $200 price point?

[1] http://www.typography.com/fonts/operator/characters/operator...

Interesting recommendation. I asked around here and turns out one of our designers actually owns the font! I'm going to give it a try for the next hour or so and see if it actually feels different enough for me to consider dropping the $200 on it. As first impression, the font feels "rounder" and I find it a bit harder to read.

Are there any other "non-usual" recommendations for writing code? I remember trying Nitti [0] for a while for, that's the font iA Writer uses.

/edit: After very short usage I already found one thing the author said to be true:

> While using Operator Mono, I found that I scan entire words as I read code more easily; while in other typefaces, my parsing style is often more letter-by-letter.

Not sure why this happens either. Maybe because the font feels more condensed? Single characters almost "merge" into blocks (words). Though it also feels a little bit harder on the eyes to read single characters.

[0]: https://www.boldmonday.com/typeface/nitti/

On your question for other ‘non-usual’ recommendations for writing code, I’ve found myself predominantly using Everson Mono¹ simply because of the wide range of characters it supports in Unicode’s BMP (and unbelievably, SMP as well!). I’m pretty sure it contains glyphs for more Unicode codepoints than any other monospaced font mentioned here. Not to mention that it was created by Michael Everson², who has made a sizeable number of contributions to the Unicode Standard himself.

――――――

¹ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everson_Mono

² — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Everson

> Are there any other "non-usual" recommendations for writing code?

Pretty unusual, but after years I finally managed to find an alternative to Consolas I liked enough in Oxygen Mono—albeit I turned down a lot of really good fonts just because they had too much interline spacing and I couldn't tweak in Sublime.

Pretty much no Unicode support outside of common accents (good for every European language at least) and common programming symbols, though. Still I edited in em and en dashes and never found it lacking since.

The are some fonts specifically designed for uniqueness of characters for people who suffer dyslexia but which also makes them exellent terminal fonts. I use Mono Dyslexic.

I use Fira Code, it has ligatures https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

Wow $200 for a font. I don't care how good it is I don't think I could ever justify spending that much.

A client recently sent me on a long chase after a font, just a font, not a family. I found it at an Italian type foundry; it had been created by a very talented expat designer. Font price: $1000. Speed at which I received a "nvm do not purchase" email from client: Near-instantaneous. Client's assistant, however, _totally_ took note and I can tell she is browsing small foundry sites more lately. Pricing is positioning.

Edit: Just remembered, client's assistant originally initiated the search for the expensive font by asking if we could use the same font as a high-end NYC-based clothing retailer. So, they were the ones who paid for it, and in multiple styles, too.

That's a pretty common price. Most people just never have the need to purchase typefaces.

Yeah it makes sense if you are using publicly but for coding where only you see the font, it's a bit silly.

It takes hours and hours and hours to make a font from an expert designer -- a rare skill set. I do think they generally should be rewarded for good work. Luckily Apple already has in Monaco, which is what I use. Wish there was a way to try this font out for a week without dropping the $200

> It takes hours and hours and hours to make a font from an expert designer -- a rare skill set. I do think they generally should be rewarded for good work.

That's pretty much entirely irrelevant. The time anyone takes to put together something is immaterial to the price. The only thing that's relevant is the added value. Putting together a new font has a very marginal added value -- if any -- for end-users such as people using editors or IDEs.

If we're talking about publishing then that's a whole different thing: fonts are a major part of the end design, and they can play a major role in establishing a corporate identity. Playing a part in that does add value, just like incorporating the work of a professional photographer in the corporate image.

But that doesn't mean that any picture taken by anyone suddenly is worth small fortunes, particularly if the photographer wastes too much time taking useless pictures.

Fonts and design play a huge role in how we understand and relate to the world. Most of this happens with us being unaware. But if a specific font is easier to read, or more pleasant to look at, that will alter our mood, outlook, and productivity.

What your arguing is a bit like saying 8-bit non-antialiased fonts running CDE in Emacs has the same value prop as running Atom on a mac today. It's just not true, otherwise the market would look very different.

No doubt they should be rewarded but charging $200 from each dev using it might not be the best business model. You have to provide value that justifies the cost, I don't think that's the case here.

If you can't afford it, try following alternative

https://medium.com/@docodemore/an-alternative-to-operator-mo...

I looked at that, but there doesn't seem to be a way to get Sublime to support multiple fonts. That means you'd need to merge the two fonts into a single family, and I had zero luck getting that to happen.

I also think it's pretty important for the cursive font not only to be monospace, but to be the same width as the non-cursive font. You'll get neither of those if you follow those instructions. In fact, I was not able to find a single free monospace cursive font.

So here's hoping that somebody gets inspired by this and makes a free alternative. I get that fonts are a ton of work to make, but I don't think I can justify spending 200 bucks on a font that only I will look at.

I also purchased it back when Daring Fireball was recommending it... on a retina display it's nice, but it has its flaws, and the value in my mind for an individual developer for this kind of thing is like $10 if it was on Kickstarter... we don't even pay for our editors!

Real experts in font design, but trying to market to developers... probably a mistake.

> we don't even pay for our editors!

You really should!

Why (or how) should I pay for Atom?

There are plenty of mono fonts with italic variants. What distinguishes this font? How easily are the characters distinguished? How does it look under different font engines? What is the optimal size for the font? How much Unicode does it support? How about common digraphs (e.g. Right arrow for =>)?

There are other mono fonts with italic variants. An issue is getting an editor to italicize as part of a highlighting scheme. I've only seen this in Mac vim and intellij but ouldnt be interested to hear about others especially in terminal

VS Code has support for it on a per-theme basis. I am currently using the Atom One Dark theme on VS Code, and Operator Mono, it does work:

https://puu.sh/sbUti/6022c0afb0.png

Above being a random screenshot from a project laying around.

I haven't found how to persist those italic settings. I can use the inspector and set them, but as soon as I close the app I loose them.

As I mentioned, it's on a per-theme basis.

Try installing 10-15 themes, and then trying them one by one. Some will have italic comments, some won't.

I use Source Insight at work for C code and it can highlight syntax further than many editors I've used. You can specify bold, italic, font, size, colors, for every different token.

I think it's Windows only though.

Terminal vim handles italics, assuming the terminal does.

Right, but what terminals do that?

I use mlterm, which aside from italics and 24-bit-color support, has the additional advantage for vim that you can configure the Alt-key prefix away from ESC and have a longer timeout.

Have you tested PragmataPro¹?

¹: http://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/

In fact, here is one person who owns PragmataPro, and loves it. I particularly love the extensive unicode support, and the differently-shaped bold faces. I tried the programming ligatures for a while, but didn't like them. I have no problem with spending money on something I look at 8 hours per day.

So it makes two of us! I've kickstarted it back in 2011 and it so far it feels like one of the best $20 ever spent.

Of course a lot of people mention the price immediately. I don't think I'm going to spend that much, but it's not out-of-line with what I'd expect for a font (I've probably never bought one). It's also quite affordable for a professional with disposable cash.

What I think is strange is licensing per-computer. Maybe that's normal for fonts. Seems very stingy to me that I should pay multiple times for laptop/work/home computer.

Office Code Pro, Source Code Pro, Fira Code, Hermit

Fira Code is excellent. I find it hard to imagine I'll be using anything else in the next few years.

I don't think the italics match at all. It's like using another font for italics. At least the "s" and "r" just break the with the base-lines and make things weird, why? "l" and "f" to a lesser extend, too.

Great to see praise for Ubuntu Mono font... Whilst it was developed (and funded) for Ubuntu, it is released under a free licence, available on google docs and google fonts.

I'll give Operator Mono a try... but i absolutely love Ubuntu Mono.

I would be curious to know what's the % of users who actually bought the font.

Very good sir! A fine choice to go with your $300 keyboard!

The keyboard is absolutely worth it and it's cheaper than that now.

The font though? I don't know about that.

Tried that keyboard, actually consider that it's a bit over-rated by people. Settled on the Topre clone (RC930) as my work and home keyboard.

That RC930 looks nice if they've managed to replicate the feel. Topre switches are expensive and for no real reason other than a lack of competition from what I can tell.

Besides the key switches, I really like the layout of the HHKB2. It is based on the old Sun workstation keyboards, which I began my professional career on. And I've learned to appreciate not having the numeric keypad, for ergonomic reasons (mouse hand stays much closer to my body, right shoulder benefits)

The arrow keys and others being replaced with a function key combo took getting used to, but now it's pure muscle memory. I like not moving my hands as much.

It's also a really ideal vi editor layout with its escape key location.

I wouldn't spend $300 on a keyboard but I would spend $150 so I won't knock $300 when there's plenty of people out there that think $150 is insane. If you can afford it and it makes you happy why not?

I paid $200+ for my Kinesis and I thought it was an extreme amount of money for a piece of plastic, some switches, and a $0.25 microcontroller.

I don't regret it.

The kinesics, and before that the even more expensive maltron, have saved my career. Easily worth the money.

Saved your career? Can you elaborate?

My hands are screwed from RSI. If I had to use a normal keyboard I would not be able to type. Period.

I think you're kidding, but honestly, this is a fine argument for buying this font. All of the same arguments for expensive keyboards apply: your editor font is something you stare at, often cumulatively for 5+ hours every day. It will never need to be replaced, and you'll use it for years to ultimately make hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Is it absolutely necessary? No. But neither is a fast computer, a comfortable chair, or a nice briefcase. But professionals will throw an extra couple hundred bucks at any of those without a second thought (or scrutiny from their peers). Why should we skimp on these tools in particular?

Sorry, but this person's hipster glasses are clouding their judgement. The author enjoys the idea of paying for and using a $200 font way more than he actually enjoys using the font itself. In case you weren't convinced, the whole "I wrote this blog post with a pen" and a picture of their quirky and messy work area with the antique mechanical keyboard....

You are just the worst kind of person, Kenneth.

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