Iosevka, Version 3.0.0 | Hacker News Reader

Iosevka, Version 3.0.0

github.com

158 pointsMemosyne40 comments

Apparently Iosevka is a font.

Just in case, like me, you had no idea what the heck it was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iosevka

> with an emphasis on compatibility with CJK characters.

It a bit funny that it does not support Korean, which K in CJK stands for. Still it supports the impressive number of asian languages though.

The same author has a sister font project, Sarasa Gothic

https://github.com/be5invis/Sarasa-Gothic

for CJK characters.

I've used Iosevka for several years since first reading about it on HN, and it quickly became my default font for terminal and graphical code editors. I've tried a few alternatives since, but nothing "clicks" for me in the same way. The main selling point in my case was slightly narrower characters, allowing more per line, while retaining legibility.

I assume font preference is a highly personal thing, so I won't wax poetic about Iosevka and try to sell anybody on it. I will, however, say this: if you haven't tried experimenting with other fonts, you really should spend a couple of hours sometime checking them out. You might find one you really appreciate!

It's definitely my current choice. Others I've played with: PT Mono, Fantasque, Pragmata Pro, Operator.

But Iosevka Slab on a HiRes display looks gorgeous to me.

I tried it yesterday, and although there is now a "Curly" variant, I got used to using Fantasque Sans Mono [0] in my terminal & editors. Now these types of font look very bland.

It might feel a little odd at first, but I find it much more pleasant for long sessions.

[0] https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans

Fantasque Sans used to be my favourite font before i discovered Iosevka Slab: the monospace variant with serifs.

Max legibility and looks incredible on retina

In a similar "Curly" style, Victor Mono - https://rubjo.github.io/victor-mono/

There's a special place in my heart for Fantasque Sans. It's always the first thing I install.

I also love Fantasque Sans, though if you like it you may also enjoy Recursive Casual Mono[0]

[0] https://recursive.design/

Thanks for the tip!

This looks very interesting. Though the amount of options here and in Iosevka are overwhelming.

Not everybody’s picky about fonts, and I get that. But lemme just say... do yourself and install Iosevka as a font and use it for editors/IDEs/terminals.

Iosevka is 1) more compact and 2) more legible than a lot of standard mono space fonts. It’s kind of a dream.

In typical Hacker News fashion I have a couple of general comments unrelated to the release itself: is it just me that is bothered by how skinny the font is? Or the lack of an “e” on the README “pangram”?

I exclusively use Iosevka precisely because how skinny it is. I have more space code vertical-split or for IDE's toolsbox this way.

Initially, I also found it way too thin, so just seeing screenshots of it I didn't understand why it was so popular. But after trying it for myself, I ended up really liking it, and have now been using it for almost half a year.

If you use large fonts (my vision is not the best), and work on laptops (which don't have huge screens), Iosevka is thin enough to have two 80-char terminals open side-by-side.

Secondly, I find it to be very legible. This is not always that noticeable in screenshots, but if you try skimming and navigating code using a new font, you see the difference.

Finally, it is quite configurable, so you can pick a character style that you like (I like SS09).

The skinniness is, I think, the primary raison d'être of Iosevka; it's for people who want a skinny programming font.

On the "e" in the README, that is disturbing. And also a little bit impressive. They went to the bother of adding `h` an unused param, why not `e`...

They added `h` because they removed `the` from the sentence. `t` and `e` are present in `it_jumps_over`

Aha. So we did miss the `e`. Good spot.

You don't have to use skinny variants, there are a lot of weights.

I personally run with a custom Iosevka build with medium/bold weight everywhere.

Example: https://imgur.com/a/gl1VZZz

Information overload on the demo page: https://typeof.net/Iosevka/. It seems that Iosevka is very versatile. The developers have created variants to mimic the dotted/slashed zeros, ligatures, etc a dozen other popular fonts. Impressive, though I have no idea where to start!

There seem to be many different thickness and obliqueness variants included, I wonder if it would be more efficient to have a parameterised font as specified in OpenType 1.8:

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

Demo page:

https://v-fonts.com/

Are variable fonts supported in important text editors? Until they are, the GitHub issues for Iosevka are 90% feature wishlist.

Since VSCode is Electron based I believe it should.

Ligatures are pretty much the only subset of OpenType that is available in text editors, sadly.

(And ligatures aren't even a good thing to have in an editor :D)

Yes, here's a screenshot of Iosevka Aile in VSCode: https://chris.printf.net/iosevka-aile.png

Condensed fonts are really great for coding. It was one of my own personal revolutions when I swapped to one. It lets me put a lot more text on the screen without wrapping - and I find it much quicker to scan and read. I highly recommend trying a condensed font out. Iosevka is great to start with, but if you're willing to spend the money, PragmataPro is better in my opinion. [1]

[1] It looks better I think (slightly thicker glpyhs), and some of the font design is a work of art. Iosevka was largely based on PragmataPro. Where PragmataPro wins out especially is it _just works_ - fully working ligatures out of the box and better unicode coverage.

I really like the condensed look of Iosevka on mobile devices. Like that I can see longer lines on the small screen without wrapping or scrolling.

Is there any example/tutorial about building custom variants? The tools are almost trivial to set up (afdko with Python, most with Node.js, a few other binaries), cherrypicking letter shapes and other options is easy with the demo page, but the example custom build script is discouragingly complex and very different from the main build script.

I was able to set this up pretty simply on WSL2 by installing the prerequisites then using the configuration here:

https://gist.github.com/jdknezek/62895daf89219e94146825de3f5...

The build process seems to build everything as per the standard release unless you decide to customize an aspect. In my case I'm only using the font for development so I didn't need the whole wide array of weights, oblique, etc. and condensed is a bit too condensed for me, so I instead made the expanded width the default.

Iosevka's great! I've been using the quasi-proportional version, Iosevka Aile, as a coding font. Never thought I'd end up using a proportional coding font!

Screenshot: http://chris.printf.net/iosevka-aile.png

Please, update main news link to `v3.0.0` release page.[0]

[0] https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/releases/tag/v3.0.0

Iosevka works great on low dpi displays. But on hidpi displays it's just OK. I used to use it when I had a "normal" 1920x1080 display. Now with a 4K display I prefer other fonts.

In the age of hidpi displays with tiny pixels, why are people still designing monospace blurry fonts? Wouldn't a well-designed bitmap font beat all of them in crispyness?

> Wouldn't a well-designed bitmap font beat all of them in crispyness?

Not necessary be blurry though. Some great fonts like Pragmata Pro [1] are designed for bitmap representations on the screen in mind. I don't know if Iosevka does it.

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

I use Isovenka in VS Code and have actually gotten multiple YouTube comments asking about my font and theme.

It's both horizontally compact and very readable!

Iosevka is the only font that has ever edged out the classic "Terminus" for my eyes. Similar to the excellent, but paid, Pragmata Pro.

What exactly is "Quasi-proportional" font? THere's a lot of variants of this font, kinda tricky to decide which to install.

Congrats to the people behind it for the release. I personally would never use a narrow font (I find nearly every single modern font choice too small).

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