Iosevka – Versatile typeface for code, from code | Hacker News Reader

Iosevka – Versatile typeface for code, from code

typeof.net

I managed to be so annoying that I got kovid and be5invis to make changes in iosevka and kitty until they worked fine together (before ligatures didn't work). User of both for several years.

Thank you for that. Much appreciated.

lmao legend, thanks a lot

I've discovered Iosevka a while back, and never looked back. EVERYTHING is Iosevka now. Code, terminals, editors, file managers, the whole flippin lot. I LOVE it, it's like that 80 columns mode on old apple IIs, just perfectly legible, and double the amount of data. I now get 4 panes of terminals side-by-side on my screen, 95 columns wide (and as many rows as I'd like). Christmas!

Talking about fonts for programmers, I recently discovered Cozette font (https://github.com/slavfox/Cozette). In my opinion, this is the nicest new programming font. I switched over to it and love it so much.

This has been my go-to monospace font ever since I started learning Japanese: It has the nice property that char_width = char_height / 2 and therefore CJK characters (which are always square) don't break the monospace alignment.

This has also been my go-to monospace font. I like the ligatures though they are strictly optional. More details about font features can be found in the Git repo [1].

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

Clearly lots of us obsess, a LOT, about fonts. I'm always evaluating terminal fonts (currently favor Comic Mono), but one thing that Iosevka's front page demo made very obvious to me: zero with a dot (IBM Plex) are (IMhO) much more readable than the Ø kludge (go ahead, look at 08800008 in a monospace font and scale it down one step. Not so easy?).

Really, sometimes I wish I could pick and chose individual characters.

> Really, sometimes I wish I could pick and chose individual characters.

Well, you can: https://typeof.net/Iosevka/customizer

:exploding-head: thanks, I completely missed that. There goes the productivity for the rest of the day.

I'm using Comic Mono in my terminal and Iosevka in my editor but your comment reminded me that I can pick and choose individual characters — look at all the drop-down boxes on section 02 of https://typeof.net/Iosevka/customizer — so I shall do that. Thank you!

If one is using aforementioned kitty-term, one can also declair a different font family per character/range-of-characters I believe..

I tend to flit between Iosevka, Monaco and DejaVu Sans Mono depending on how often I get bored enough to fiddle with fonts, nothing comes close to those 3 for me

pretty much the same :)

Another suggestion:

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

For me, Hack has been the one and only font for almost everything for years now. Except for Eclipse on Windows, where you cannot change the line spacing. Too bad there's no further development for that font right now.

The PureScript ligature `<=` should not be a `less than or equal`, because it could also be the left double arrow. Better don't use it at all.

All the more reason to forgo programming ligatures altogether.

That's easy to do, just don't enable them in your editor.

Be sure to check out the full customization instructions, which list every single thing that can be customized in a local build of the font, at every possibly level, with screenshots for comparison, in a simple readable list:

https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/blob/master/doc/custom-b...

For example:

> K with symmetric legs disconnected to the vertical bar, and serifs at top left

> Ratio of the thickness of the neck of S/s/?, to the normal stroke width. essRatioUpper, essRatioLower and rssRatioQuestion will override this value for corresponded glyph categories when set.

> Extra-high _, placed right below baseline

> The lower bar of <= and >= ligation is slanted

I'm really jazzed about how many great new monospaced typefaces are coming out lately.

My current default is IBM Plex Mono (Light), but this one looks super cool too.

I don't think I like the idea of "baking a custom build" with letter variants, though. A font file should be like an album - fixed at time of release, with one version uniformly published, so that if you use font X on machine A, and use font X on machine B, you get the same results.

I also don't think I'm on board with the ligatures for code bandwagon. It doesn't accurately map 1:1, the symbols to the ASCII contents of the file, which bothers me.

I used to be Iosevka cowboy for a long time, and now I'm taking IBM Plex Mono for a spin and it feels nice and spacious. Not sure I'll get used to the very fancy curly braces though.

I do sometimes get the fancy of "going back to basics" and turning everything to default. SF Mono that's bundled with Mac OS is pretty nice for that.

> I don't think I like the idea of "baking a custom build" with letter variants, though. A font file should be like an album - fixed at time of release, with one version uniformly published, so that if you use font X on machine A, and use font X on machine B, you get the same results.

I'm not sure I follow? I use a custom build, let's say "Iosevka Custom" and when I install the ttf files on multiple machines it looks the same..? You can download any of the different published variants and they will look the same too?

> I also don't think I'm on board with the ligatures for code bandwagon.

Good thing they are optional and you can completely disable them in your own custom build if you so choose :)

For about a year now I've been using a custom build that I meticulously created over the course of several weeks of trial and error, now I can't use anything else. The only other font that comes close for me is Jetbrains Mono but my custom Iosevka is my bread and butter font for most editor-like things I use.

I'm a fan of Hack, but I guess that its development has ended by now.

JBM is one of the better monospace fonts, and Iosevka looks interesting, with all the options to configure it, but I kinda shy away from the need to customize most of the characters, let alone install npm just to build a font.

Envy Code R is great. There is a power line version out there too.

https://damieng.com/blog/2008/05/26/envy-code-r-preview-7-co...

It took me one or two days to get used to this font, but now I'm happy with it, and the amount of space it brings to my terminal screens.

Yes, far too many monospace fonts are too wide on the x dimension, while Iosevka is one of the few that has a slightly condensed look to it. Pragmata Pro is another one.

I generally don't mind it, it is a bit bland, but sometimes that's a good thing. But that capital 'Q' - why?

You can choose 8 different variants of the Capital Q. https://typeof.net/Iosevka/customizer

Hopefully there’s one that fits your taste

I don't mind the Q, but that lower case t is an abomination IMO.

Exceptionally nice set of fonts!

I use Iosevka Fixed SS16 MdEx for coding on Windows 10 (scaled) where font rendering is inferior to Mac.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the default font in the Lagrange gemini browser. Looks great.

Iosevka is great. It was my preference for a while until Comic Mono stole my heart.

I use Consolas. Very good with small font sizes.

Can we get this in Google fonts finally? any googlers here?

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