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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

Holy kerning Batman... Maybe I'm too sensitive to this, but this text rendering engine is BAD. It says "SPA WNING". Below in SPAWNED wn is overlapping. "(sha)red" has similar problems. Lowercase "cce" however is way too wide apart.

I can see how people may like the idea, but it looks like xcode was never tested with proportional fonts...

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That screenshot is pretty old, from Xcode 3, back when I first switched to TNR. I have no eye for kerning, so it didn't bother me then, but it looks a bit better in Xcode 5: http://i.imgur.com/rRxUpDY.png (included quoted text "CHARACTER SPAWNING" so it can be a/b compared).

The comment is the only thing that looks super legible on that screenshot.

Not sure if this is a critique of my font choice, or of objective c?

Or of the colors?

The comment is the only thing in a monospace font. It's a criticism, and a valid one, of your choice of programming font. Nobody in their rightest of minds programs in Times New Roman. I'm convinced you must be trolling us.

I agree about Times New Roman. Yuck. I use Georgia for a programming font, and it's much more readable.

Yes, it is a proportional font too. But I can assure you that I am in my right mind and am not trolling you.

I also use proportional fonts for Java to make the code look like it's taken from an algorithms textbook. Also, idiomatic Java as produced by IDEs usually doesn't align variables, so the code looks OK as long as the space characters themselves all are of the same width.

The C++ code I work with usually has more strenuous alignments which are only possible to get right in monospace fonts.

Nobody I know does it, so it must be ridiculous!

Totally unreadable to me. To each their own

My main problem with proportional fonts is not alignment (I don't really do that beyond the indentation) but symbols. Most proportional symbols, especially thin ones like dots, colons or the vertical 'or' bar, get too packed in between letters and can be hard to see. Since reading code with precision and ease is the most important trait I ask of my programming fonts, proportional fonts are out. But I'm open to suggestions about one that works.

Yeah, I'd be interested in seeing proportional programming fonts, but you'd have to give the non-alpha glyphs extra weight.

Alternately, IDEs that support proportional fonts could apply extra tracking to all non-alpha glyphs (and multiple sequential spaces, too).

I hate parentheses that touch.

Based on the bar at the top, it looks like Xcode 3. I just tested with Xcode 5 and it kerns "AW" in Times New Roman correctly.

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