Input: Customisable Fonts for Code | Hacker News Reader

Input: Customisable Fonts for Code

input.djr.com

111 pointsp4bl035 comments

For those who don’t know him, David Jonathan Ross who made Input also runs the “Font of the Month Club”, where for $6 / month you get one font made by him per month, as well as really detailed and well written emails about the thoughts and process behind his typefaces.

https://djr.com/font-of-the-month-club

Was a long time input user until Jetbrains Mono was released: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

To my eyes it's the best font for coding (SF Mono on the Mac being another nice one that I like on the terminal)

Came here to say this. JetBrains Mono is my favourite code-font. The ligatures are excellent too.

After using Jetbrains Mono for a while, I switched completely to Cascadia Code (https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code). Looks great

Personally I prefer Hack (https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/) but I used Ubuntu Mono (https://design.ubuntu.com/font/) before. I find the harsh serifs in many monospace fonts too jarring but this comes down to taste.

I love this font so much. Actually I use the nerdfonted version "Caskaydia". It just sucks that it does not have italics. But just the last month I was trying out every other font under the sun (with ligatures), including checking out some commercial ones, but none of these is so damn readable while still being rather dense with the perfect weight and expressiveness than Cascadia.

It makes the code so much prettier. However I am extremely open to alternatives that look similar but have italics.

It looks nice overall, but I can't get over the jarring edges on the M. And to this day I don't get why so many great fonts have a dot inside the digit 0 instead of a stroke.

Minor details, absolutely. But with the number of newly released coding fonts you gotta compare them somehow.

> I don't get why so many great fonts have a dot inside the digit 0 instead of a stroke

A slashed zero often looks too similar to the figure 8

Input Mono, like many monospaced fonts, has the `zero slash` extra, which you can should be able to use if your application lets you choose the alternates and stylistic sets provided by OpenType fonts (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/otspec1...). And, in the case of Input Mono, it's also provided in the Private Use Area, at UEO5C.

(There are other characters that are frustratingly similar to the zero. There are the oslashes at U00D8 and U00F8, the Ocentered tilde at U019F, various thetas, the circled dash at U229D, the circled fraction at U2298, the circled minus at U2296, the empty set at U2205, the diameter sign at U300, etc etc. The dot is quite a nice solution.)

I use the Iosevka typeface family [1] which also allows customization.

[1] https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka

Similar and more customizable: https://typeof.net/Iosevka/ https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka

This has been my font for my terminal and Emacs (ever since I switched to the GUI) for several years now. I even got Fontcase[^1] on my iOS devices so I could install it there. Super legible, looks great, and nice and customizable.

[^1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fontcase-manage-your-type/id12...

The asterisk (“*”) lower variant is still too high. It should be vertically center-aligned with “=” etc.

I use the non-monospaced version (Input Sans) in every editor I work with. A lot of you might consider it heresy to do so, but I would highly recommend you to try out. Unless you are trying to align tokens on the same line with spaces or create ASCII art, it doesn't interfere. And the readability is massively improved.

I'll only consider using a non-monospaced font for code if elastic tabstops [0] become commonplace.

[0]: https://nickgravgaard.com/elastic-tabstops/

Fair enough. I suppose it depends on your language and coding style. If you want/need to align arguments with start parenthesis for example, you'll have a bad time with variable width fonts for sure.

This is amazingly useful. I've always had to settle for a tradeoffs between widths and alternates when choosing a terminal/IDE font; I've just created the perfect combination that fits my readability needs.

Storing the configuration in URL query strings is also a nice touch. Thank you for making this.

I tried ligatures and different letter combos and none of them ever stuck with me. I have used M+ MN Type-1 Regular as my terminal and programming font for years, I started because it was narrow but it's been my go to ever since.

https://mplus-fonts.osdn.jp/about-en.html https://mplus-fonts.osdn.jp/design.html#mplus_mn1

I didn't realize how strongly line spacing effected code readability for me -- really glad I saw this.

I use Cascadia Code from Microsoft because I enjoy the programming-oriented ligatures it includes, such as rendering '!=' as '≠'.

https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code

One can copy ligatures between fonts: https://github.com/ToxicFrog/Ligaturizer

That would remove my primary objection to Input. Seeing a broken arrow -> is ground glass in my eye; other font subtleties are a sign to me I'm losing focus.

I could never understand why on Earth anyone would want to render two separate symbols as a single glyph in the source code, one of very few types of written material where every individual symbol actually matters.

My favorite mono space font ever. I’ve stuck with it for years and can’t get tired of it. I highly recommend folks give it a try. Keep in mind that things such as font width and letter spacing have a huge influence in how it looks, especially in macOS.

Same. I previously used Ubuntu Mono, Consolas and Monaco for the most part, but once I customized Input to look just right for my tastes, I never looked back.

Amazing to play with. In light of the font size discussion from a few days ago: I would love to have a UI like this integrated into an IDE like InteliJ so I can fine tune the font rendering to my liking.

I try so many fonts, but in the end I always return to Inconsola-dz.

https://www.recursive.design/ has these features too. I use it everywhere.

A really great font; sadly, not open source, so cannot be shipped by your favourite distro.

https://github.com/arrowtype/recursive/blob/main/OFL.txt says it is the most common open source font license, and allows even commercial use. It can definitely be shipped by distros.

Sorry, by mistake I replied to a wrong comment — I meant Input, of course.

Ooh, these are nice. I love using a proportional font for coding.

As an aside, anyone know of proportional fonts with coding ligatures (or a way to generate them/create a mash-up)?

Iosevka with `quasiProportionalDiversity = 1`.

e.g. https://gist.github.com/4256994d206875f6407979d63b40764c

Recursive has the bold the same width as regular, which allows for a very flexible experience. Don't know if any other fonts offer that feature.

Input is a really great font; sadly, not open source, so cannot be shipped by your favourite distro.

I love it!

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