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Nerd Fonts

nerdfonts.com

164 pointsfibo20 comments

By the way, for those on macOS, Apple recently introduced a huge set of icons/symbols that you can resize like any other font and use anywhere within text (in macOS) or images (iOS).

Just copy and paste the symbols like any other emoji, from the SF Symbols app:

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Not only you can use them as is in your final app, these are absolutely great in UI mockups and even placeholder game sprites.

I’m getting massive use out of Symbols in my Apple platform personal projects, where they’re already a huge time saver but I never thought to use them in this context. Great comment!

It should look like this: 􀈂 􀈒 􀈖 􀈠

https://i.imgur.com/b1T6p9r.png

Of course they will appear like blank squares on most webpages and iOS, but you can copy those squares back to the symbols in native macOS text fields.

It's a little inconsistent; in iOS/tvOS/watchOS/Catalyst apps you have to use `Image(systemName:)` but it's not available on macOS, where you have to copy the symbols from the SF Symbols app into regular text, like emojis.

Apple, why?

That's crazy, I had no idea.

It seems like it could almost be used as an alternative to Font Awesome... but while they're obviously intended for use in private apps on Apple platforms, there's no indication I can find you're allowed to export/subset them to your own webfont to use on any website.

Not that I assume Apple would search/care in practice, but it would be cool if it were officially sanctioned.

Nerd Fonts is a terrific resource. The project does more than just aggregate, all Nerd Font variants are patched with extra glyphs and icons allowing for much more expressive and informative (and fun) terminal prompts. It's also a great source for text editor fonts. All fonts are offered in multiple formats making it easy to match your workspace across platforms.

I don’t understand at all.

Can someone explain why you’d want icons in the monospace font you use for development?

I thought those icons were mainly for building websites. But those are usually triggered with a CSS class, not embedded in source code.

What am I missing?

you can use them on the terminal. there are projects like lsd[1] and vim-devicons[2] that use them.

[1] https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd [2] https://github.com/ryanoasis/vim-devicons

In some languages like Hy you’re allowed to use any characters in names, and are encouraged to use one-letter names for so-called tag macros.

Watch this 30 second video and you will see why it is awesome to have icons in your terminal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NESi45Q2mHg

Apologies in advance if the music is not to your taste.

Video seemed to do the opposite effect to me. Information overload and clutter made me wonder what I was looking at. Plain old terminals without these special symbols convey a lot more meaning with a lot less.

Personally I find the Powerline set of icons for git very useful in my status line. Sometimes, I get a phone call in the middle of a git bisect or "rebase -i" and the corresponding little icon is a great reminder to run a git status when I get back to the tab.

When you are navigating directories (using NERDtree in vim) it is useful to have icons beside each file

surprised this wasn't posted on here much before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19132033) Upwards of two years old

The definitive nerd font is Computer Modern[0], i think.

Certainly it is true that i trust anything with lots of math in it more if it is typeset in CM. Problem sets feel downright homey after a while.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Modern

That is not what this link is. This is a link to a project that aggregates all popular font icons (font awesome, material, etc) into a single project.

They also have actual fonts:

https://www.nerdfonts.com/font-downloads

I've found source code sans to be an excellent font for LaTeX, and the companion source code pro for code blocks. They are significantly more readable to me and to most people I know, though that may have to do with screens being much higher-resolution than when computer modern was created.

Here's my arm-chair hypothesis: the thin connecting lines (don't know the technical font term, though I'm sure one exists) showed up fine on low-res screens because they simply couldn't be made thinner than a certain amount. On high-res screens, they get much thinner, and my eyes have trouble tracking them. Easier to read on paper, though.

The technical term is "hairline," though that tends to get used primarily in fonts that have high stroke contrast, of which Computer Modern is most definitely an example.

Personally I prefer IBM Plex Mono and family. https://github.com/IBM/plex

Yes! Such a great font. I recently spent too much time reviewing mono fonts for programming and IBM Plex Mono was my top.

Office Code Pro was my runner up.

They would be more popular with cooler names like Fira and Hack. ;)

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