Iosevka typeface for code, from code
github.com
github.com
I have no patience for a font that doesn't get this right, and only limited patience for a font that doesn't make it clear that they did get it right.
:::scuttles back to DejaVu Sans Mono good-enough-ness:::
I switched from DejaVu Sans Mono earlier this year, and haven't looked back - so much so that I set up Git LFS support on my Emacs init repo, just so I could add the custom-built .ttf and have Iosevka available on every machine where I do any meaningful work with text of any kind.
Sure, DejaVu Sans Mono (Menlo, et al) are "good enough", and that's fine. For me at least, Iosevka is great.
though I would ask the same: which of those is the default, and if none of them is, why is there no comparison image?
I created my own flavor of Iosevka called Monocode that I use everywhere a monospaced font makes sense.
As a Debian sysdmin, I don’t do much in the way of pure coding, but I use terminals frequently, write Bash scripts, Dockerfiles/Docker Compose files, and generally engage with monospaced text daily. Iosevka has become my default over the last several months, to the extent that I have added its GitHub repo to my dotfiles and deploy it everywhere that I operate. It is one of the only narrow monospaced typefaces that doesn’t look squished, but rather crisp and clean while being extremely efficient in its use of space. It’s italics are stylish without being overly decorative, and its glyphs/Powerline support seem to just work across Linux, MacOS, and Windows.
PragmataPro is the only font that has come close, due to the author's obsessive optimization (including embedded pixmaps, something Iosevka lacks and may always lack).
The pricing is a bit weird on PragmataPro, which scares me away from it. "Essential" includes no coding ligatures (if that's your thing), makes you pay for regular and bold separately and has no italic at 20 euros a whack. With ligatures, its 60 euros each style.
Arguably, Pragmata is worth the money, but I wish the author of it would sell it in a way that makes sense to programmers, instead of trying to sell it like he was selling a font to designers.
I've been using IntelOne Mono for about 6 months now, and I like it a lot. So legible I've actually been able to drop my main editor and terminal fonts sizes down a notch or two, while remaining readable.
I do like ligatures, and I like checking out new fonts, but I'm not going to be offended if you don't. ;)
And I hate ligatures as much as I hate table aliases, so Consolas suits me just fine. Although, DSM is a close second. I just wish its "<=>" were more distinguishable.
You may have overlooked it before because one of the more advertised "sequel" features is ligatures, but Cascadia is one of the fonts that uses the Mono/Code naming scheme to turn on/off ligatures. ("Cascadia Mono" doesn't include the coding ligatures that "Cascadia Code" does.)
Not saying there is anything wrong with it, but for me it feels like to much of a distraction.
I don't even know what font I'm currently using, though I put some thought into choosing it at the time.
Some of us just care about what our fonts look like. I'm loving the configurator with Iosevka; yes, I'll likely spend an hour tweaking a custom font, but after that I'll just be done and move on.
There's no "flex" if I never even show anyone my dev environment or talk about what font I use. I think you're experiencing selection bias in thinking that only people who flex care about their fonts. ;)
It'd be nice to have a word for something you care substantially about, but with fleeting desire and no desire to preen about.
I am on Iosevka now partly because I can pull it from AUR in my setup scripts which is something not all do.
But you claim that I am suffering from mental bias, while you know nothing about me other than a single post.
Maybe it is just that I posted something a little too close to the mark for you, and rather than reflect on why that might bother you, you externalize it.
It really is significantly more legible, especially in parens/braces/brackets and punctuation. Before, it was easy and common to mistype , for . or vice versa, and not notice until it failed to parse. Since, I've done that maybe twice.
If a certain font works for you, by all means keep using it. Just like nobody should tell you what editor to use, a font is also a matter of personal preference.
That said, certain fonts have features that many find advantageous. I like that Iosevka is narrow, which means I can fit more text horizontally. Legibility and not having ambiguous symbols is also important. I also dislike ligatures, and want my font to be able to render multiple alphabets. But ultimately, I just like the way it looks. It renders nicely in all sizes and weights. All of these might be features your font choice also has, or you might not value some of these as much as me, which is perfectly fine.
It's narrow, comes in a very light weight (I use weight 250 for coding), and works well in Emacs, VSCode, and iTerm2. I find that its bold and italics are easier to read than many other fonts, and that oO08 iIlL1 g9qCGQ are all distinguishable from each other.
I used to use Source Code Pro but found that I wanted something that allowed me to view more in the same width windows.
Another option is Victor Mono: https://www.programmingfonts.org/#victor-mono
That's what's on display at the linked URL (if anyone else was confused)
You can also select variants for specific characters (there's 42 zeroes!): https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/blob/main/doc/character-...
Is there a browser that a page with a thousand .svg files will load in? because it ends up being a page of missing images and 'broken image' icons on every browser I've tried.
Really a bad decision to present the choices that way, IMO.
Must admit that I am a font / typeface hopper, I usually switch between Iosevka, Jetbrains Mono and more recently Comic Mono.
By "large", I mean that they are readable on a hidpi monitor without scaling. Thus at least of size 24 pixels, hopefully larger. So far the only one that I know is Terminus, which is not particularly beautiful.
You can also use bdfscale to blow up an X11 bitmap font, but will have to contend with the larger pixels: https://github.com/philj56/bdfscale
Alternatively, use a TTF/OTF "bitmap font" and scale it an integer multiple of its actual height. The fonts in the Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack are good for this: https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/
It appears these are two ways of spelling the same name, and that has made me curious about its etymology.
I've not found much in the way of clues. Most of the search results are either in reference to the font or to the game.
According to names.org, Iosefka is tagged with Gender-Neutral and Hebrew: https://www.names.org/n/iosefka/about
Does anyone here have one of these names? Can you share the story behind them?
If that's the case, then the reason Iosevka and Iosefka would be variations of the same name is that, in many Slavic languages, voiced consonants typically become devoiced in clusters before unvoiced consonants. So they'd both sound the same, despite the spelling difference (according to English spelling rules, they'd sound more or less like Yosefka).
* Josef - male form
* Josefa - female form
* Josefka - diminutive female form
so Iosevka to me looks like English spelling of Josefka
If you're curious, male diminutive forms of Josef are: Josífek, Jožin, Jožka, Pepa, Pepík and about 100 others.
I'm using Fira Code for multiple years now and the setup is super straightforward. Just install, add it to config, enable ligatures and you are good to go.
Looking at the Iosevka page I'm just thinking what the hell is going on here? How do I even start choosing which variant to use? I like nice fonts, but I also like to have a clear way of doing things. Iosevka doesn't offer one. I guess it's there for a much more motivated aesthetes.
I love Iosevka, and well it has been only font I've used above Terminus and a pirated Pragmata Pro for coding, so don't let too many option hold you back from trying it if you like nice fonts.
That said, you really can just install the fonts and not worry about any of that. I have used iosevka-term since the first time I saw it on HN years ago and it remains my favorite fixed width font.
I essentially wanted Input Mono [1] but with more characters. Iosevka has a stylistic preset ("ss18") that sets the character variants to match the designs of Input. There's also the "extended" family, which matches the width almost perfectly, albeit I need the font size to be 13pt for Iosevka to match what Input looks like at 12pt. Go figure.
It's good stuff.
If you have your favorite font and you find another font that seems interesting, I think it's important to force yourself to use something else for a week or two before you make a judgment. Habits die hard.
I think it's a bit less narrow.
I appreciate that it is slightly thinner.
Beautiful. It feels tall in just the right way.
> In all the monospace subfamilies, 9 weights (Thin to Heavy), 2 widths (Normal and Extended), and 3 slopes (Upright, Italic and Oblique) are included.
If I set "style: Bold Italic" in my Alacritty config, the text becomes thick and slanted. Bold does only thick, italic only slanted.