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Comment by oefrha | Hacker News Reader

I learned about Carbon maybe three years ago. Back then the README example looked like this: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/10369094/30791512-...

Now it looks like https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/8397708/63456416-b... complete with weird cursive font and all.

IMO this niche obsession with cursives, ligatures and stuff in programming fonts actually hurts first impression for a significant percentage of people landing on this README.

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Obsession with dark, unreadable text colors are much more destructive to my eyes than cursives. Whoever came up with the idea that blue on black was a good color for displaying code on a screen, or dark green on black was a good idea for comments should just stop using computers together with everyone who installs and uses those themes.

I mean, everyone should be able to use themes that they are comfortable with, right? I don't think there is any evidence for dark themes "destroying" anyones eyes. And even if there was, I think you'd be able to survive looking at a Screenshot for some trendy JS project.

For me, dark themes help reduce eye strain, particularly at night or if I've been staring at the screen for a long while already. But I don't judge others for picking color themes which are comfortable for them. Your screen, your rules.

I think the issue wasn't with dark themes per se, rather with bad color choices resulting in poor contrast (dark blue or dark green on black)

>Whoever came up with the idea that blue on black was a good color for displaying code on a screen

Was probably working at night and didn't want to be surrounded by lights 24/7...

Yes, I don't want them near a computer, and yet here they are:

$ poetry init

    This command will gide you through creating your ~invisible text~ config

Dark themes are absolutely essential to some of us with annoying floaters in our vision.

Ubuntu default terminal themes are also cursed with this. That said, I haven't used Unity in a while, so maybe it's improved on that DE.

Unity is dead (and has been). Ubuntu just uses GNOME now.

I think it was just a natural consequence of early CGA graphics cards which only allowed combinations of on/off red green and blue components with light and dark variations giving a total of only 16 colors available to work with. If you wanted a colorful enough UI you pretty much had to use all 16

I could say the same for whoever came up with the idea of black on white.

> Obsession with dark, unreadable text colors are much more destructive to my eyes than cursives.

I disagree. When working at night, even with indoor lighting; pastel colors and lower intensity of darker themes reduce eye-strain significantly. Daily eye-strain takes its toll at night even if you didn't code or use screens during the day.

I personally don't like ligatures as much too but, it's a choice after all. People shall enjoy the work they do, shall customize their working environment to reduce friction as much as possible for them.

This is an extension of desktop customization and I look some of them with awe. I don't spend that much time customizing my coding environment and terminals. I also don't share some of the choices they make but, as I said, environment is a personal thing after all.

> Whoever came up with the idea that blue on black was a good color for displaying code on a screen, or dark green on black was a good idea for comments should just stop using computers together with everyone who installs and uses those themes.

Instead, we can use the themes which we like and suit us best, can't we?

Personally I have light color themes for everything, this allows me use f.lux darkroom at night which I find much gentler on my eyes.

Personally I don't use f.lux however, I think it is a nice piece of technology.

My monitor has a blue blocking filter and I personally keep it enabled 7/24 but, reducing the overall light intensity via dark themes works better for me especially, when coupled with the blue blocking filter of my monitor.

OTOH, it's important to note that I always preferred darker themes on my systems since I started to use computers.

I fail to see where you have disagreed with me, but whatever floats your boat, my fellow contrarian.

I think I love dark, pastel themes while you don't like them and I don't think ligatures are big problems too.

I agree the ligatures are a bad idea, and I use a ligature font in my editor. I quite like ligatures, I find they moderately enhance readability, but you need to know exactly what they are for it to be useful: readability can't come at the cost of precision in a code sample.

I'm actually far less bothered by programming ligatures than cursive font for comments. It just so happens that Operator Mono bundles these unconventional features together, so I kind of lumped them together.

But yeah, using ligatures in code that’s meant to be shared isn’t a great idea.

Cursive font is annoying, but bold fonts make my blood rage.

In terms of fonts, what’s the difference between readability and precision?

Readability of programming ligatures is very different for people who are familiar with the language/font, and people who aren't.

For instance, look at the list of ligatures for Fira Code[1] and without referencing the monospace counterparts on the right, tell me if you can tell how to reproduce each one without a lot of guesswork.

[1] https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode

In the sense I'm using them, readability is the ability to scan as quickly as possible, precision is the ability for someone unfamiliar with the font to be able to reproduce what they see.

I find ligatures more readable because for example I read the => ligature faster than the two-character equivalent. I find it less precise because someone who sees the ligature may not be clear what it's supposed to be (when I first saw a ligature font, I thought it was a unicode character).

⇒, the Unicode symbol, is supported in PureScript and Agda out of the box and is supported in Haskell with UnicodeSyntax extension. Personally, I find the ligatures more confusing than support for the actual Unicode symbols (albeit they can be more cumbersome to type if your editor doesn’t help, i.e. ctrl+k "=>" in Vim). Every time someone uses Fira Code in a presentation someone in the audience always has to ask and now you have to go down a rabbit hole of explaining what ligatures even are.

> albeit they can be more cumbersome to type if your editor doesn’t help, i.e. ctrl+k "=>" in Vim

I wonder why physical keyboards lack unicode support. Virtual keyboards often have great support for this. Older keyboards could also input a lot of symbols:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Space-ca...

Could be an issue with agreeing on a standard. But also, the average user would rather have emojis on a keyboard before various math symbols (and, outside work, I'd feel the same).

In what sense is the latter font "cursive"?

I think he refers to the ligatures

I’ve seen actual cursive code fonts (just one, I think. Maybe someone knows which one I’m talking about) and this isn’t it. I’m assuming the stylized terminal/descender (particularly on the “t” and “f”) are probably what are causing it to be described this way.

Edit: I’m blind and didn’t see the comment on the bottom :/ This is the cursive font I’m talking about.

That’s <s>Operator</s> Dank Mono Italic.

It’s great to finally know what that font is. (And avoid it personally, to be honest…)

Actually upon closer inspection it seems to be a font that’s very close to Operator Mono Italic but not exactly it... So don’t take my word for it, I guess.

Edit: Okay, it's Dank Mono. Should have checked the font options on the website.

Some of the letters in the comment do look like cursive

I don't think it's very controversial to call Operator Mono Italic a cursive font.

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, only the font used for the comment is cursive.

Ah, thanks, I had missed the comment entirely, so I mistakenly thought you were taking about the distinctive "f" in the code font.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive:

“style of penmanship in which some characters_are_written_joined_together in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters.“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_letters:

“a sans-serif. (or "gothic") style of writing Latin script in which the letters_are_individual_glyphs, with no joining”

Here, the s and the l look like they are cut out of some cursive text, but even they clearly are individual glyphs. The other letters in this example to me clearly are block letters.

Examples of truly cursive fonts are Lucida Handwriting and Zapfino.

Having said that, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italic_script) describes italic as semi-cursive, and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive_script has a few other ‘cursives’, some of which don’t connect letters.

> I don't think it's very controversial to call Operator Mono Italic a cursive font.

What do you think cursive means? It means joined up writing. All the letters in this entire screenshot are separate - not joined up.

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