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Comment by Jerry2 | Hacker News Reader

One of my favorites is PragmataPro [0] (with powerline glyphs) and I'm sad it's not there. I guess they can't use proprietary fonts. PragmataPro was so weird when I started using it but it has grown on me and now I have a hard time switching to a terminal that uses something else.

In any case, if you're like me and you look at the terminal screen for hours on end every single day, find some font that won't tire your eyes and is optimized for your screen. If you have to squint or double-check letters or numbers because they're unclear, increase the size or switch to a different font.

[0] https://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro/

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Huh. Not to sound cheap, but it really seems unnecessary to me to spend 60 Eur for a font, when I already have really good fonts like Inconsolata in my reach for free. Is font really that important, do you think? This is an honest question, please don't think I'm sarcastic.

That's an average price of a AAA game, right? And what kind of utility do you get from that?

Just did a quick check... I bought it in Sept of 2012, 2323 days ago.

$70 / (2323 day * 6 hrs/day) = $0.005/hr

Did I get my money's worth (and mind you, I paid less than that.. I'm just going by today's prices)? I think I did. It all depends on how you value things.

Not trying to make any value judgement of my own here, but I think the parent was more referring to the marginal cost/benefit of a $60 font compared to some of the free options available.

Except that most expensive AAA games don't have free counterparts...

Not all fonts have free counterparts. “Serif” and “sans serif” don’t always mean fungible.

If you don't buy fonts often 60 Eur may seem expensive but that's actually pretty cheap as far as paid fonts go.

Yeah why not? I configured it on all my consoles and ideas. It looks good, is dense and good readable.

Inconsolata doesn’t even have italics!

I also second PragmataPro. I've been using it for 5+ years now. The ligatures are fully optional, and the font comes in several variants for software that doesn't allow to select features.

It's a slab serif, condensed. You have to like the style. Some people prefer the opposite (wide with ample interline spacing).

It packs quite some columns on the screen while still being perfectly readable and basically every glypth is hand-tuned for small pixel sizes. There's not much else comparable designed with that amount of care.

The closest font on a stylistic basis I've seen is Iosevka.

I second PragmataPro. I've been using it for a couple of years now. Totally worth it !!!

All those ligatures for <>, <=, >=, etc. annoy me to no end. Ew.

Agreed, I don't get the ligature craze recently. They look ugly, and sometimes, they don't accurately reflect an operation most of the time, for instance when you use operator overloading.

PragmataPro does come without ligatures though, and that's what I've been using as my main font for over a year now.

I only see them on Fira Code, Hasklig. Oh, Monoid too.

For ligature fans: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/MonospacedProgrammingFontsWit...

Modern languages should simply support the actual characters, e.g. ≤ ≠ ≥ ← → etc.

$60 for a font...?

Is there something wrong with Hasklig, Fira Code, or Inconsolata?

There's nothing wrong with the original IBM VGA console font, for that matter. Font perception is a very subjective thing, though.

Also, I think increase in screen resolution contributes somewhat. I find that I'm a lot pickier about fonts after getting a 4K display.

> There's nothing wrong with the original IBM VGA console font

Oh boy... Don't get me started on this. Those semi-consistent application of serifs, wide vertical traces and the overall MDA-ness of it drives me nuts. It's not like IBM didn't have anything better to choose from.

disclaimer: I make the 3270 font, which is based on the 3270 terminal font, which is the better thing I mentioned in the above paragraph.

I took a look at 3270 font, and I definitely strongly prefer IBM VGA. I don't care about semi-consistent serifs etc - I'm not a font designer. But it's very readable.

Which, again, just goes to show that this stuff is all very subjective.

It is. A lot of my strong feelings for the IBM MDA/EGA/VGA font comes from its 80's-ness and its origins. Also, at the time I first saw them (first on CGA, then on MDA) I was an active user of 3270's terminals and I wondered why would they do that if they had the choice of using something cleaner. I understand CGA dictated wide vertical stems (because NTSC) and that probably influenced the choice for MDA (it was already used in other pieces of equipment, IIRC) for consistency but...

Yes, it's a matter of personal taste.

I use a reproduction of the IBM VGA console font called Nouveau IBM [1]. Very happy with it: https://i.imgur.com/cT0pCL4.png

[1] https://www.dafont.com/nouveau-ibm.font

If you don't mind pixels, you can get the exact originals (but packaged as a TTF, and incorporating many encodings).

https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/

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